Laments by Laurel Premo

‘Laments’ presents four pieces of griefwork that sing connection. Delivered through solo voice and fiddle and rooted in the functional music of lamentation, these wailing songs of few words are not themselves live grief ritual work, but prepared compositions that echo sounds found by the maker performing such rites on herself. The sound is a highly saturated experience. It bends the artist over, in awe of the strength of its source, and with a shocking blaze reveals deep aliveness inside of the density of pain. This work holds the possibility of grief being an ecstatic act that helps connect oneself with what tremendous energy, what love, led to this immense feeling, and the witnessing, in place of the emptiness of loss, the weaving of connection. These songs sing the tension and gravity of life, of intimacy, of reciprocity, of relation, and of surrender through sacred raw sounds that invoke the listener to enter into feeling.

Following ‘Golden Loam’ (2021), Premo’s third solo release bears further evolution of her singular voice in experimental roots, bringing American and Nordic lineages through her own compositions with phenomenal intonation sculpture, her hands and body crafting resonance that physically shakes. The traditions woven in Laurel's music come through lived experience as a woman raised by the beings, land, and traditions of the Upper Midwest. From Finnish dance halls and Southeast square dances, to time spent locally and abroad with elders, to solitary meditation on trance in traditional movement and sound, this understanding now pushes itself out, not as separate roots but a combined voice. The devotional labor of ’Laments’ was self produced and recorded as live performance. Laurel Premo is a Michigan-based artist who has been writing, arranging and touring internationally since 2009.

Physical products (vinyl pre-order, extended notes booklet, cd) available at: https://www.laurelpremo.com/store

Laurel Premo is known for her rhythmically deep and rapt delivery of roots music. Solo performances reveal bloom of underlying harmonic drones, minimalist repetition, and rich polyrhythms. Presenting these sounds on finger style electric guitar, lap steel, fiddle, and voice, Premo fully leans in to the archaic melodies and in-between intonations that connect folk sounds to the mystic and unknown.