lavender are Oskar Rice and Adam Jackson; friends since school, one a DJ/producer, one in an indie band, their burgeoning friendship saw them bonding over Elliot Smith as much as J Dilla. Their debut EP garnered praise and appreciation, with lead single peppermint currently on 22 million Spotify streams. The recently released lowlight:slowlight won a plethora of support from Clash, Wonderland, The Line Of Best Fit, DMY, BBC 6Music and more.
their new album, we're having a barn dance, is the story of one tumultuous year of living, loving (and the falling out thereof). The songwriting is a diary of an eventful 12 months. “We had a big chat about what this all means to us,” explains Oskar, “And we boiled it down to this: it’s about love, but not necessarily romantic love. It’s about all of those competing emotions and how, if you love one thing, it might detract from loving something else.”
we’re having a barn dance is both literally and metaphorically their one year safari of discovery, starting in a farmhouse in France through to a studio behind Lidl in Limehouse. “I think the album for me feels like a journey,” explains Adam. “I was definitely fixated on this multifaceted concept of ‘home’ throughout the writing process. It seems to start with a departure and sets in motion an attempt to try and locate, then return to, an ever-evolving sense of home. Which is interesting as I was couch-surfing for the bulk of the time we were writing the album, living across so many different homes. Oskar and I gave each other permission to use the shared project as a personal outlet. And making it was entwined with a process of self-reckoning and was helpful in a way that I hadn’t experienced from music before.”
“We were pretty perfectionist,” says Oskar. “Took a while tweaking everything and making it right. And it really documents, I think, that year in a really nice way.”
