READ our ★★★★★ review of Lover, Other here.
BUY the album via Rosie Lowe’s Official Store + Bandcamp.
The Albumism platform is predicated upon the belief that the album format remains the truest, fullest manifestation of an artist’s vision and the most gratifying way for listeners to experience music. Even amidst the increasingly pervasive paradigm of streaming that enables—and arguably, encourages—us to cherry-pick the songs we play in a more haphazard, disconnected manner, many of you reading this article right now recognize that there’s nothing better than absorbing the breadth and depth of an album, from the first song to the last.
Rosie Lowe’s third solo studio LP Lover, Other has arrived today and in its unequivocally ambitious scope and exquisite execution, it exemplifies the vitality of the album format and demands to be heard as a complete body of work. Hence why the Albumism crew and I are so grateful that the Devon-bred, London-based singer-songwriter recently took the time to share her reflections about creating each of the project’s fifteen songs with us.
Ever passionate and purposeful about the writing and recording process, Lowe’s perspectives below affirm her uncompromising commitment and connection to her craft, while offering us, the listeners, deeper insight into how this beautiful record came to be.
“Sundown”
This song is about loss, written a few days after a dear friend took his own life. My friend and collaborator Harvey Grant came ‘round to mine, sat down at the piano and played some chords and the melody and lyrics came pouring out of me. It felt like a necessary way for me to process what had just happened.
We then took a segment of the original song and Harvey did an arrangement that I later recorded my vocals to. I recorded these in different locations, a chapel in Florence and my gutted flat before renovations started. I wanted to bring natural reverb of different places into the vocal sound. We split the song in two to open and close the record. It felt like the right way to bookend it.
“Mood To Make Love”
“Mood To Make Love” was written on a warm balmy late afternoon in Madremanya, Spain with the most wonderful duo and album collaborators, Uma and Luke. The song sounds much like the day felt. I write a lot of songs of love and appreciation for my partner, but this song is taking a moment of self-recognition of all the things I offer my partner, too. An ode to self, if you will.
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“In My Head”
This was one of the first songs I wrote with Uma and Luke on my Spanish residential. I wrote out a list of limitations l was interested in exploring around songwriting and one of them was to write a whole song to drums and percussion, without using any harmony. We had a lot of fun writing this and it’s definitely an approach I’ll be returning to again.
The song is about feeling changes in life and trying to learn to not resist it, but to lean in and surrender to it. To not overthink what others think about me and to dig deep to a place inside where I forge on anyway, despite my fears.
“Bezerk”
My pal D’Monk sent me this beat and it resonated with me straight away. This song is about balancing on the line between happiness and love, despair and destruction and the desire to see things in a more positive light. There were a few versions of this song but none felt quite right, so D’Monk and I took the vocals and re-harmonised them using a vocoder and that seemed to unlock it for me.
“There Goes The Light”
A song about how in stillness things still grow, move, change. I think these days we're often always on the treadmill and worried about time and wasting it, needing to make every day count. This song is about leaning into rest and doing nothing. I wanted the song to feel lazy and reflect those days where time passes by so slowly. I loved tracking Dan See (drums), Jamie Woon (guitar) & Cameron Dawson (bass) to this, their parts added glue to the production.
“Walk In The Park”
The main sample of this comes from Brazilian artist Dóris Montiero’s song “Lero Lero.” The whole song was written over that looped sample. There was something so sweet about the feeling of that sample that we wanted to mirror that in the melodies and lyrics. It’s about someone who makes you feel endlessly loved and safe.
I grew up on old Disney movies such as Snow White and Bambi and really wanted to emulate the joyful sound that comes from the relationship between voices and strings on this. Harvey Grant arranged the string parts in response to my choral vocal arrangement, I then responded to Harvey’s arrangement with more vocals and him again with me. Our process became a reflection of the call and response we were trying to create with the strings and vocals.
We got the incredible Raven Bush (Speakers Corner Quartet) in to record the strings. I decided to record the strings in a friend’s big, beautiful house in Deptford (The Master Shipwrights) I was living at, so it sounded more “alive.” It happened to be a really windy day on the day of recording, so the string recordings have lots of wind (and life!) on them!
“Something”
D’Monk sent me the original instrumental for this—something he made on his computer in an hour whilst in bed. I loved the feeling of it and the repetitive nature of the rhythm and wanted to mirror that in the vocals. D’Monk and I spent many days working on the arrangement of this one and had many versions of it before it slotted in and felt right.
I pulled in my Opera singing pal Isabelle Peters to help with the operatic stabs at the end of the track which we recorded at The Master Shipwrights house in Deptford, along with the grand piano which the track ends with.
“Don’t Go”
“Don’t Go” is an ode to mine and co-writer Harvey Grant’s love for harmony. He turned up at my flat for a session and I pulled up this vocal and a harmoniser and told him I wanted to spend the day re-harmonising it. He wasn’t sold to the idea at first, but it quickly turned in to our favourite writing day together. I think it might be my favourite on the record.
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“In The Morning”
The samples from this came from Makoto Matsushita’s “I Know.” I recorded the samples into my SP-303 and even though the machine had no memory space, I couldn’t bring myself to clear them for other songs, so I knew I had to make something with them.
I wrote the song about being claustrophobic. Asking someone, in the most loving way, to physically back off and give me space. When going to clear the Makoto samples we got a “no” from the label, but no reason why. We then got in touch with Makoto directly who loved the song and cleared the samples for us. I was so relieved, as I loved making this song and wanted it to exist on the record.
“Out Of You”
This song was written on the first session Harvey Grant and I had with each other. It was a rainy and stormy summer day in London (you can hear the rain all over the recording). I lit lots of candles in my flat and mic’d up my piano and the song appeared with so much ease, which solidified the main collaborator for the rest of the record. It’s a special one for me.
“Gratitudes”
I’m a big believer of saying daily gratitudes which really help shift my daily mindset, so this is my ode to my morning ritual and a reminder to myself in times when I’m stuck in my head, that there’s so much to be grateful for.
The beat for this song came about in Berlin with D’Monk—we made it on his MPC in fifteen minutes before leaving the studio. I couldn’t wait to get back to London and get writing to it.
“This Before”
I dusted off my flute for the first time in ten-plus years for this song! Recorded between Spain, London & Eastbourne, it’s a love song for those long loves that just keep turning up and delivering, over and over again.
“Lay Me”
The sample for this was recorded on my iPhone from Harvey jamming on my piano at my flat. In Spain I got the call that dinner would be ready in twenty minutes, so challenged myself to write something before dinner was served.
I chopped up that iPhone recording, layered some vocals up and this is what came. The sample was very lazy and off grid, so Dan See (drummer) had to really sit on it and move with it, which he made look easy.
“Lover, Other”
This was the last piece of music that came together on the record. It came from a fifteen-second section of a three-minute demo I made. I wasn’t sold on the demo but loved the intro, so got Harvey to arrange the clip for strings. I then responded to it with vocals and we rearranged the piece around those. I love arrangements that morph over time and can respond to new elements being added.
“Sundown” (Reprise)
The full version of the first track, with the string arrangement by Harvey and strings recorded by Raven Bush. One day I may release the original song this version came from, maybe.
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