by Eleanor Linafelt (@ratqueen3)
On her latest album I Want The Door To Open, Lillie West, the songwriter behind Lala Lala, tackles the challenging task of articulating what it feels like to lose a sense of one’s real self, particularly familiar to the many of us who spend time creating a variety of alternate selves on the internet.
While the album’s first single, “DIVER,” a straightforwardly structured verse/chorus/verse/chorus pop song, sounds like a natural next step from Lala Lala’s previous guitar-heavy album The Lamb, the second single, “Color of the Pool,” marks a distinct departure. It’s rooted in a fast, beeping synthesizer line that sounds slightly off-beat with the melody. Clocking in at only 2:22 minutes, “Color of the Pool” is filled with sonic surprises, ending with a startling saxophone solo. The line “I’m feeling multiplied, feeling far away from what I need,” sets up a theme consistent throughout the rest of the album: the sense of having an abundance of other selves, none of which feel quite like the real one.
Many of the songs on the album grapple with this idea to a certain extent, using an impressive array of structures and styles to do so. In the first verse of “Prove It,” West sings, “Living like you’re on the screen/I’m looking for the real, real thing,” backed by only a guitar line in an unusually sparse moment for the album. In the following synth-drenched “Castle Life,” she continues to yearn for the real, singing, “I wish that I could see/What’s right in front of me/Which reality/Is actuality.”
While I Want The Door To Open is largely an examination of the loss of self in a fantasy world, it’s making was very much rooted in the collaborative, real world. Co-produced by Yoni Wolf of WHY?, the album features a variety of other artists including Ohmme, Kara Jackson, Benjamin Gibbard, and Sen Morimoto, who are real life friends of West’s. Their distinctive contributions provide a warm contrast to the record’s themes of disconnectedness.
It’s not until the final song on the album, “Utopia Planet,” that Lala Lala arrives in a world that is real and whole. In Lala Lala’s utopia, “Everything is here, here/In real time no mirror, no mirror.” I Want The Door To Open compellingly and effectively examines the feelings of losing a sense of self in a fantasy world, but ultimately doesn’t submit to them.