On the back of her debut track Secrets, Newtown artist Le Pie has blown up on FBi radio, Triple J, Rolling Stone, everywhere. The secret is out. With the film clip dropping yesterday and her first EP and he said honey, you look so fine on its way we’re about to find out a lot more about her.
An indie pop songstress whose favourite thing away from music is making out. Le Pie you’ve just made our day.
Originally hailing from Mullumbimby in country NSW Le Pie surprisingly spent her formative years as a punk-rocker drumming and screaming throughout many dark and dingy bars. As we now know she was hiding a great talent for pop music, saying this week “I have always written pop, this is just the first time I have recorded and performed it”.
Now residing in Newtown, an appropriately textured suburb to match her music, it is little wonder she names chameleons as her favourite animal. She admires their ability to adjust to any environment. She clearly has her own adaptive capabilities if Secrets is anything to go by. Gone are the ragged, rough edges of her youthful punk days to be replaced by fuzzy, layered, soulful pop sounds. Secrets was recorded in Waterloo with Ben Moore of Harvest Recordings and it’s a dreamy escapist success.
The track opens confidently, walking straight towards you, exactly as Le Pie does in the video. Strong uncomplicated percussion and a backing guitar loop are the perfect canvass for Le Pie to spread her incredible voice across. At times her expression sounds like a drawl, at times it’s husky and smoky, and at others it’s sweeter than sugar. Every time the chorus comes around and she utters “And if” pure perfection is found.
This is only a split second of the song in reality but it really got me. She lists Sonic Youth and The Shangri-Las as influences and both can be sensed in this song. It has the relaxed dreamy poignant feel of Sonic Youth in parts but the spunky attitude and tone of The Shangri-Las in others. The spoken word stanza of the song in particular seems to be a nod to The Shangri-Las. At this point we fall in love with Le Pie, her pitch becomes higher, more vulnerable, innocent and quite frankly, huggable.
Secrets is thematically very relatable, everyone wants to get away from where they are or go back and make different decisions, or pretend they’re living in a space brighter than what they are. Le Pie speaks of all these things in a resigned introspective way, as though she’s not entirely concerned with finding a solution but is content with the therapy that airing these worries brings. Some songs can sound both minimal in sound and vastly spacious. Secrets manages to do this and it’s largely due to the strength and scope of Le Pie’s voice, it’s truly intriguing and will attract new fans with every play.
The film clip is definitely worth checking out. Le Pie mentions in the song that she sees pictures when she hears music. Well we see pictures when we hear her music and the image formed is not too dissimilar to what is evoked in the video. It’s a great accompaniment for the track. Le Pie says she is hopeful of both an album and tours on the horizon but the EP will be enough excitement for now and will be highly anticipated.
