Lucia Lie
I’ll Wake You In the Morning
Rob Connolly, lead vocalist and songwriter for Lucia Lie, has this sung/spoken delivery; this “I’m telling you this story because you’re my friend, and I don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I’ve made” way of singing that reminds me of many different things at once. Basically what I am thrown to is comparing Rob and his band to Chris Carrabba’s Dashboard Confessional. Now, imagine if Chris had, say, just successfully kicked a heroin addiction and survived the loss of both parents in a car crash, after having his best friend steal his girlfriend • and maybe his dog died, too. Better yet, take Carrabba out of the equation and replace him with “Nothing Man”-era Eddie Vedder and you get the point I’m trying to make: the songs on I’ll Wake You In the Morning are pretty darn heavy.
Lucia Lie are a Boston-area-based quartet whose music demands that you pay attention, rather than just throw the disc on as background noise. In this way, I’ll Wake You In the Morning is the perfect soundtrack for those times when you’re a captive audience, just dying to get all introspective and shit with some tunes that run the musical gamut from straight-up, no frills emo to post-Nirvana grunge to second wave American punk rock along the lines of mid-period TSOL and Fugazi. Let me mention also that they have a cellist, Lorena Ruiz. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot that more and more bands are using cello in their music. Maybe the cello is the 808 box of the modern era. I don’t know. It works on these songs, making them sound sadder and more earnest, which is undoubtedly the point. I mean, Rob actually sings “I swear that I’ll be sober soon!” on one song. Wow, heavy. I’m glad the cello was there.
The two most compelling songs here are “Nadi” (which gets a rhythmic boost from drummer Blaise Lanzetta’s bad ass snare cadence paired with Stephen Yonkin’s solid, rumbling bass playing) and “For Love Of The Bomb (Oh Holy Night),” where Connolly actually invokes the hymn “O Holy Night,” while Lanzetta tosses some impressive fills into the mix. Nicely done.
I can definitely see Lucia Lie having a potentially huge untapped audience. I’ll Wake You In the Morning is highly recommended for all emo-grunge-punk crossover enthusiasts, the “Kumbaya with tattoos” Dashboard Confessional crowd and those who have an appreciation for what a well-placed cello can do for a song.
Lucia Lie: http://www.lucialie.com/
