Australian artist Leuras caught up with us fresh off the release of ‘Crimson Moon,’ the first single from her upcoming album Coffee and Moonlight.
From chance encounters under a blood moon in Hawaii to writing through lockdowns in San Francisco, Leuras talks us through the stories, places, and emotions that shaped her dream-rock sound.
We chat creativity, home, heartbreak – and the quiet moments that inspired a record full of depth, warmth, and change.
HAPPY: What’d you get up to today?
Today I woke up late after our single release show last night at The Soda Factory in Surry Hills in Sydney.
We played with five other local bands. It was a lineup of mixed genres from hip hop to soul and alt-rock which made for a really fun night!
We played a 7 song set mainly of new songs from our upcoming debut album “Coffee and Moonlight” coming out later this year.
HAPPY: Tell us a bit about where you’re from, and what you love about it!
LEURAS: I grew up in the Blue Mountains, in a small town called Leura.
It’s about 1.5hrs outside of Sydney in the UNESCO world heritage listed national park.
We lived really close to the three sisters–a famous rock formation formed around 200 million years ago in the Triassic period.
We learnt about the Aboriginal dreamtime story of the three sisters as kids.
They were turned to stone by their father to keep them from leaving their local tribe to marry men from another rival tribe.
I still feel very connected to the Blue Mountains – the nature, the progressive social and environmental values the community instilled in me, the creativity of the people that inspired me to create things…
I came of age there with friends, some of whom I still go through life with today, even if we live in different places now.
Leura is not my physical home anymore, but I feel like I’ll always carry a bit of my original home with me throughout life.
Home for me now is Sydney, though I lived in San Francisco California for six years which also feels like another home.
Photo: Blue Mountains
HAPPY: You wrote “Crimson Moon” after witnessing a blood moon eclipse in Hawaii. Can you describe the moment and how it translated into the song’s lyrics and sound?
LEURAS: I literally stumbled across a blood lunar eclipse on a beach on the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii on a trip there in 2022.
I was travelling with a best friend and we met some locals at a bar one evening.
I ended up heading down to the beach with one of them to watch the moonrise.
Suddenly the moon unexpectedly started to turn to crimson and then blood red, and slowly disappeared, perfectly first to a crescent moon, then it was gone.
The lyrics of the song goes “the moon it dove, a crimson rose, and fell beneath our clothes”.
I wrote the song after that night.
HAPPY: You’ve described the album as capturing pandemic-era isolation in San Francisco. How did this period fuel your creativity, and what overarching emotions tie the songs together?
LEURAS: For me the pandemic allowed time and space to create that I just didn’t have before. I could reflect, and just be.
It was obviously equally devastating to watch a virus spread so rapidly around the world and to witness so many deaths and social life deteriorate.
But personally I never liked 9–5pm work, so when the pandemic hit and we were all asked to work from home from the job I had at the time, I felt a sense of relief.
I also got out of the house a lot and exercised.
I saw friends at 6-feet distance on city hikes in San Francisco and rode bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge through the Marin Headlands.
I fell in love during that period too.. It was only a year-long relationship, but I think we both fell deeply.
I wrote a lot about him, about love and loss, about California and the streets I lived on in SF.
I wrote about the days of the week I looked forward to (one of the songs is called “Fridays”), drinking black coffees in the mornings, watching the moon rise in the evenings.
There were hard times too, but I wrote songs about the beauty and joy I was able to find.
Photo: South Yuba River during the pandemic, Northern California, 2020.
HAPPY: How does “Coffee and Moonlight” differ from your 2023 debut EP in terms of production or lyrical themes?
LEURAS: This album differs from my 2023 debut EP in that I recorded this album in Sydney at a new state-of-the-art recording studio, BrandX, whereas my EP was recorded in San Francisco at Hyde Street Studio using vintage recording gear from the late 60s and early 70s.
Wally Heider set up the SF studio in 1969 when the psychedelic rock scene of San Francisco took over the city and many artists from The Grateful Dead to GreenDay have recorded there.
I play more instruments on my upcoming album–I’m on lead guitar, rhythm guitar, piano, and keys.
I have new band mates on this album too as I moved countries. Dillon Marrill is on bass, and Joel Hanley is on drums.
This album was recorded by Jess Smallwood, and mixed by Matt Tuggle in LA who has an incredible discography under his belt from Stevie Nicks to Coldplay and Lana Del Rey.
HAPPY: Which song from the album are you most excited for fans to hear, and why?
LEURAS: I think my favourite song from the album to play and sing is My House. It’s a co-write with the band.
We wrote it one night at rehearsals and I actually started singing about my dog I had just rescued a month earlier–Gaston–he’s an eight year old french bulldog.
We got down the chords and melody pretty quick, then I went home and I ended up writing the lyrics to the song that is now called My House.
It’s really a song about vulnerability at its core, and well, leaving the past behind. It’s also about living in the present, and enjoying moments with new people and being at home.
It’s about what home means, and the emotional safety it symbolises without any confusion or chaos.
It’s about opening the door inviting someone in again as “skies are blue at my house, there are windows and no roundabouts”.
Gaston is there too. :)
HAPPY: How do your roots in the Blue Mountains shape your “dream-rock” sound?
LEURAS: I actually played in a punk-rock band in my teens and I was really into rock and punk rock then.
Also bands like Silverchair were taking over the airwaves. It was the late 90s and we would record songs from the radio on tape and make mixed-tapes!
My fav album was No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom, and I got into a lot of ska and punk bands from California like Link80, and then I discovered The Stokes.
When I first heard Last Night on Rage in 2001 I was captivated. They’ve been one of my favourite bands since.
I’ve always been into making music, and spent my teens going to festivals and shows and playing at them too around Sydney and the Western Suburbs.
There was a fun scene back then!
HAPPY: You’ve played everywhere from Sydney to the Davis Music Festival. Any standout memories from sharing the stage with artists like Josiah Johnson?
LEURAS: A standout is playing a show in Northern California north of San Francisco in Bollinas at Smiley’s Saloon.
It’s this outdoor venue that is connected to one of the oldest Saloons on the West Coast in Marin County.
This small town tries to keep tourists out by not having any signs leading cars directly to the town.
So it has this sleepy, bohemian, locals-only, feel to it.
When we played that night it felt like the whole town came out to watch us on the main stage outside.
It was a cold night, on April 15th 2022, and it was my birthday!
The first birthday I had out in a live music venue since covid hit in 2020.
We played alongside one of my favourite Bay Area local artists Zelma Stone.
She played a paired down set as a duo with her drummer who also sang harmonies which was mesmerising.
She moved to LA soon after that show so I’m glad we got to share the stage that night together.
April 2022, Smileys Saloon Bolinas, California, West Coast USA.
HAPPY: Beyond “Coffee and Moonlight”, what creative directions are you curious to explore?
LEURAS: I’m really into blues-rock and psychedelic rock, and while I was living in California I got a lot more into California country and bands that had more of a country twang sounding lead guitar.
I’m keen to explore those sounds a bit more on my next albums.
The songs are already being written which is fun to think about how they might evolve over the coming months.
I also wrote a bunch of songs while I was doing a song writing residency recently in April this year in up-state New York just near Woodstock.
The songs have an Americana and blues rock sound which I co-wrote with other musicians during the residency.
HAPPY: Lastly, what makes you happy?
LEURAS: Ah the age-old question! I treat life like chapters and each chapter I seem to learn a bit more about myself and the world around me.
I think I’m getting happier in each chapter! I think the pandemic really showed us what really matters in life… our relationships–with friends, partners, family, band mates, those we spend our days with.
So spending time with people in my life who I care about makes me happy.
Making music and sharing it with people makes me extremely happy and makes me feel so fulfilled and calm.
Travelling to different countries, hiking and spending time in nature makes me happy.
I love adventures and exploring new places and putting myself in new situations.
And learning about the past also makes me happy, it kinda helps me make sense of the chaos of the world we live in.
I wrote a lot of songs recently about the history of upstate New York and Woodstock.. The bands that played there, chasing a dream.
That made me happy!
Photo: South Yuba River during the pandemic, Northern California, 2020.
