STARFACE
West London multi-hyphenate LAVA LA RUE has always been a master of imagination, known for their genre-bending sonics and kaleidoscopic aesthetics. So when their makeup artist Maya Man started drawing a large star on LAVA’s face before shoots and shows, in an effort to channel “a lesbian Ziggy Stardust,” it didn’t take long for it to take on a life of its own. “I felt like I was becoming this sort of character, and I wanted to build a whole world around \[them\],” says LAVA, real name Ava Laurel. “How would I embody that character that I become when I’m putting on a big show? What is their storyline? Who are they in love with? How did they get here?” That was the genesis of their debut album, *STARFACE*, a celestial, sapphic sci-fi adventure, told through the lens of intergalactic outsider STARFACE, an alien tasked with investigating the self-destructive nature of humanity. With their own tangled queer love affair on tracks like “INTERPLANETARY HOPPIN’” and “LOVEBITES,” and the biting social commentary of “CHANGE” and “Humanity,” this project is rich with themes of romance, injustice, empathy, loss, and ultimately self-discovery. And, in true LAVA LA RUE fashion, it feels equal parts nostalgic and future-facing: a fully realized intergalactic vision, inflected with funk and soul, bolstered by hefty rock riffs and breakbeats and embellished with strings, flutes, and horn sections, plus plenty of featured artists (and even a spoken-word moment from Courtney Love). “I think when I was a teenager exploring, I had a lack of resources and my sound was very much limited to what I had, which in a way was a really good thing and it shaped me as an artist,” says LAVA. “But \[on *STARFACE*\] I had no limits.” Read on as they talk us through their ambitious debut, track by track. **“A Star Journey Begins…”** “Once it became clear how the project was going to start, I wanted people to listen to it and imagine opening credits. It’s almost like a *Star Wars* reference and I kind of want people to imagine the yellow text on screen that comes up at the beginning and says, ‘Directed by LAVA LA RUE,’ ‘STARFACE.’ The opening credits to the movie that you’re about to sonically embark on.” **“Better” (feat. Cuco)** “‘Better’ is joyful and it’s supposed to be an uplifting song at its core, but I wrote it probably at one of the most traumatic periods of my life: I had had a stalker who figured out where I lived from watching my Instagram videos. When I got into that studio, I was talking to myself as if I was a friend that was going through a depression. It made so much sense for Cuco to be on it. I had met him back in 2018 when we were on the same flight to Berlin. The people that we were back then versus the people that we are now are so different. It was funny reading back on our texts—we were kids, basically. He has gone through his own process of becoming sober and a more healthy person. So the song has this overall tone of telling your younger self or a friend, ‘We’re going to move up from here. If you look into the horizon, we’re a better person there.’” **“Manifestation Manifesto”** “This was made before I had started the album. Back then, I was on this mission, ready to take on the world and very much like, ‘You’re either with me or not with me, let’s start a revolution’ vibes. I’m still very much there, but as I’ve grown up I also have this sort of tenderness of ‘The people who I think are the enemy, are they really the enemy? Are these the bad guys or are they actually also caught in the same rat race that we are and have just been fed information to try and make us dislike each other?’ It’s at that stage of STARFACE’s journey where they’ve been given the mission, assigned to go to Earth—they need to figure out what’s going on and \[whether\] people are either with them or they’re not.” **“Push N Shuv”** “The oldest song on the record. We didn’t change any of the main vocal takes, so you’re hearing 21-year-old me. Stylistically, I was pulling a lot of references from Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, that ’80s New Wave movement. The thing I loved about the sonics of that era is that you’d have a funk bassist, a sort of reggae drummer, and then a punk guitarist. I felt that fusion was really representative of me and how I wanted to play. So the bassist on there grew up in the gospel church, he tours with me and he’s got funk rhythms down to a tee. Then, the drummer was Yuri from \[London indie-rock trio\] Honeyglaze, who is also a producer in his own right for a lot of bands in that George Tavern, \[The\] Windmill, Brixton scene \[in London\]. And then Karma Kid produced it. It was the anchor point for the whole project, basically.” **“STARFACE’s Descent” (feat. tendai)** “This is the crash landing—my goal was for people to feel like they knew what was happening by just hearing sounds. I really wanted to push myself here. Having tendai hop on was the perfect missing ingredient. Conceptually on the song, he’s actually my AI control room person within the ship, basically telling me that the ship isn’t going to last the crash landing but I will be able to, and he says that very poetically within his lyrics.” **“Aerial Head”** “STARFACE’s first day on Planet Earth. It’s a documentation, STARFACE reporting back to the ship from the opening line, saying, ‘Right, it’s Tuesday, 3:45. I’m presenting as a human and I’m feeling great about it.’ This was produced by Isom Innis, who’s in the band Foster the People, and that particular song was originally a Foster the People demo. I changed the storyline and rewrote the lyrics to fit with STARFACE coming into London for the first time.” **“Poison Cookie” (feat. AUDREY NUNA)** “This is about the cookies on our phones. At first, a lot of people try and resist like, ‘No, I’m going to protect my privacy, I’m going to protect my data.’ And then at a point, it’s like, ‘Do you know what, they’re tracking my every move, I’ve \[already\] given the algorithm everything.’ Especially if you’re an artist or a presenter, you’ve put your face out there, you’re Googleable. You’ve got a Wikipedia, you’ve got articles about everything, there’s literally nothing else left to hide. And it’s about accepting that you’re very much plugged into the matrix, unless you commit to the bit of being off the grid from the get-go…That’s why the hook is ‘Poison in the cookie, but I’m going to eat that chip anyway.’” **“Friendship’s Death (1987)”** “The sample is from a film of the same title starring Tilda Swinton, who plays an alien that comes to Earth and wants, again, to stop humans being so self-destructive. She’s meant to land where a UN conference was being held in America but instead ends up landing in Palestine by accident. It came up completely by random, decades and decades late, and when I watched it, I couldn’t believe how much it was relevant to the project I was making and also what was happening in the world. In the end, Tilda Swinton’s character decides not to go to America to continue the conversations, instead she becomes a freedom fighter.” **“FLUORESCENT / Beyond Space” (feat. NiNE8 & Feux)** “This is one of the final battle scenes. STARFACE is gathering their comrades in the form of NiNE8 \[the alt-pop collective LAVA LA RUE founded and is part of\]. They’re like, ‘I’ve figured out who the enemy is, let’s come together and align, let’s make this happen.’ It was probably one of the most challenging songs to make on the record—I wanted to assemble so many members. Altogether, it’s got six features: me, Biig Piig, Mac Wetha, Lorenzorsv, Nige, and Feux. I was bouncing back and forth with each person—it was kind of a metaphor for what was happening in the storyline because it was a bit of a battle of pulling all these people together to have this big final product. It felt like making an epic musical, almost.” **“INTERPLANETARY HOPPIN’” (feat. So!YoON!)** “It’s a bit of a slow jam. After the big battle, it’s the moment you get to kiss the girl. It was sick having So!YoON! on this song. It made a lot of sense, and I just really admire her. She’s an amazing guitarist, an amazing songwriter, an amazing singer. She’s very similar to me in that her heart is both in her band, \[Seoul indie-rock duo\] SE SO NEON, where they’re really more rocky and heavy, and then with her solo stuff, she’s got this more soulful voice. She doesn’t compromise having to be in one world or the other.” **“LOVEBITES”** “I made this with my boy \[LA-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist\] apob in his studio in West Hollywood and it was one of those songs that are made very instantaneously. I think I even shocked myself, like, ‘My girlfriend has a boyfriend, he hasn’t met me yet.’ You know when you say something and think, ‘Am I really about to air this out on a song? OK, cool.’ \[From there\] the song kind of wrote itself.” **“CHANGE”** “‘CHANGE,’ at its core, is about not losing that spark that you have inside you when you’re younger and you’re like, ‘The world is fucked. Why are people like this? I want everything to change.’ The opening lines were read by Courtney Love. I’d met her backstage at an event, and she’s someone that has shown that exact resilience. I asked her to read an excerpt or say a few words. She found this monologue that Al Pacino had said in *Glengarry Glen Ross* and repurposed it for the narrative.” **“Humanity”** “For me, ‘CHANGE’ and ‘Humanity’ are the two processes of how something gets done. There’s the initial anger and determination and will. But then it’s like, you can shout at someone and tell them they’re doing something wrong, but nothing actually progresses until you have an active solution or a sense of humanity, a sense of empathy. That overall theme that’s in the album, this is where it’s worded the most on the nose. I think the most radical thing any human can do is be deluded enough to believe that it *is* going to get better, it *is* going to change, it will have to, and then it will.” **“Second Hand Sadness” (feat. yunè pinku)** “It’s a comedown song for sure. What comes with those feelings of radical love and the delusions of ‘everything is going to be great’ is that you also have moments where it becomes real and it hits you how much work needs to be done. Whether that’s in a relationship or what you are trying to achieve in life. And that second-hand sadness is when someone you really care about, or the circles that you are in, are going through it and you find yourself also being glum and you don’t know what it is. When you have that empathy and tenderness, you have it for the highs and the lows as well.” **“Shell of You”** “I was building up this storyline of when STARFACE and their romantic interest, Alia, are bouncing around, almost on a pub crawl across London. I think it’s a moment where in their relationship they’re like, ‘Is this going to work out? Is there even any point in me being part of this?’ I wanted to set myself a challenge for this song where I create a song like an old-school ’70s songwriter would—getting the perfect chords on a grand piano and guitar and essentially writing the whole song on \[them\] before we even touch the studio. And then build it up and make it bigger and bigger and bigger.” **“Sandown Beach”** “A beautiful scene before a long goodbye. This takes place on a perfect day, between STARFACE and the love interest, but tomorrow’s the day STARFACE has to go back home. For anyone that’s ever deeply fallen in love with someone, but for whatever reason your time is limited, you really do enjoy every moment and love and kiss on such a deeper level than when you know you can see them tomorrow and the day after. It was written and inspired by a perfect day that was literally the best day of my life.” **“Celestial Destiny” (feat. bb sway)** “The big finale. I wanted to leave it on a cliffhanger and almost let the listener decide what happens. It’s at a pivotal point right at the end where STARFACE reaches this big ultimatum: ‘Am I going to go back home, report all of my findings, report all of this experience I’ve had on Planet Earth and then go back to the mothership only to be reassigned a new mission to never return again? Or am I going to stay here with this person who I’ve just had the best day of my life with? I’m clearly head over heels in love with them, but it means that I’m going to have to watch the world potentially crash and burn and destruct and never go back home.’ It builds up and then it’s like, ‘To be continued…’”
With a sci-fi concept and a psychedelic sensibility, the NiNE8 Collective member brings a mix of funk, ska punk, grunge, dance, and indie that’s part London, part L.A.
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