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"A while back, I wrote about Brooklyn retro-pop quintet Lucius and their utterly addictive single &amp;quot;Hey, Doreen!&amp;quot; Thankfully, there&amp;#x27;s much more where that came from: Now, with the release of Wildewoman, the world has an 11-song collection to tap its toes to. (I triple-dog-dare you to deny yourself the pleasure of doing so. Impossible!) On Wildewoman, co-lead vocalists Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, along with Dan Molad on drums and Peter Lalish and Andrew Burri on guitar, have expertly crafted a set of buoyant and layered pop songs that occasionally dabble in darker tones. (Click the album art below to purchase on iTunes!) And many of the songs function like inspirational pep talks between close friends&amp;amp;#8212;what&amp;#x27;s not to love about that?! Holly and Jess chatted with me about their special, sisterly bond, how the album took shape, life on the road, and of course, their pop-culture obsessions. Tune in... GLAMOUR: How did you all meet? I read an interesting backstory about an old house... Holly Laessig: The house actually came after we met. We met in Boston, while at school, and became friends through mutual connections. We connected on the same love of music: We both loved old-school soul and rock &amp;#x27;n&amp;#x27; roll. We eventually decided to work together on a project. It was nothing big at first, but we started writing and singing and then moved to New York to continue. We had friends living in the Ditmas Park neighborhood in Brooklyn and found a beautiful Victorian house with musicians to live in. We almost didn&amp;#x27;t go, but there was nothing in the ad for the house except that it was a big house. There was a Steinway grand piano in the living room and an old recording studio in the basement. Jess Wolfe: There were three thousand records and the owners had thrown them out! So much history&amp;amp;#8212;it was a music school and recording studio. It was like, holy crap, we have to live here. We nurtured our writing habits on the piano. GLAMOUR: How did you decide on the name &amp;quot;Lucius&amp;quot;? JW: That was my dog&amp;#x27;s name! He was this funny character who was so ugly that he was handsome. He was goofy and clever, and we liked the juxtaposition of something ugly that meant beautiful. We liked the sound of the name. It has a &amp;#x27;60s quality. GLAMOUR: What made you aim for a more retro style? Was it particularly derived from the older music you were inspired by? JW: It started with the recognition that Holly&amp;#x27;s voice and mine fit like one together. Moving to New York was inspiring as well as our common influences. We were never in a rush and didn&amp;#x27;t want to force our evolution, and saw fit to nurture our process. When we met Danny, our producer, we were in a place where we were ready to experiment. We were never tied down to any one idea. At the time, we didn&amp;#x27;t have a distinct process or even a label. And of course, the band formed as we were recording. A lot of it&amp;#x27;s just happy accidents! GLAMOUR: Where did the album title, Wildewoman, come from? HL: It came from the title track, of the same name. Like a &amp;quot;wildebeest.&amp;quot; The whole sentiment behind the song is about being little girls and learning how to grow up and go your own way. Not being discouraged by taking the untraditional route. It was a good sentiment for the whole record. The songs all have this personal pep talk to them, like, &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re doing good, stay true to yourself.&amp;quot; JW: We weren&amp;#x27;t the coolest girls in school and were always looking for our own path; our own way to express ourselves. When we found each other, it was the first time we felt freedom in an artistic community, but we always wanted to recognize those girls who don&amp;#x27;t always have a voice, or maybe have a more difficult time finding one. Holly was a nanny for many years for this family and was watching this little girl grow up and seeing how free-spirited she was. We were watching all the strong women around us who had that same essence. I think you recognize it most when you have it in yourself. GLAMOUR: What&amp;#x27;s life on the road like? Any funny or crazy memories from your travels thus far? HL: It&amp;#x27;s hard on the road and you just want a floor to sleep on usually, but we&amp;#x27;ve been lucky enough to stay with friends everywhere we&amp;#x27;ve gone. The funniest one was when we stayed with this guy in Nashville who was a friend of a friend of a friend. We went to a studio in the middle of nowhere and all night long we did air-guitar and drum-solo routines to his collection of all these weird records. It was so strange because he was in this small farmhouse and there were like six Baptist churches surrounding us. There was an abandoned school bus in the front yard, and there was an aspiring rock star living there too. But there are five of us in the band. We&amp;#x27;re all creatives, so it&amp;#x27;s never really a dull moment. We&amp;#x27;re crammed into a van and do the driving ourselves for now. It can be awesome and freeing, but of course you have to break all the equipment down, and perform, which can be tiring, but it&amp;#x27;s part of the process, you know? GLAMOUR: What&amp;#x27;s the most rewarding thing about performing live? JW: Connecting to an audience for sure, and hopefully inspiring some people. The great thing about Lucius is that we don&amp;#x27;t really have one type of listener. We have 65-year-old women and 18-year-old boys at our shows. That&amp;#x27;s really awesome for us, that so many different types of people can find joy in your art. I love traveling the world with my best friends. It&amp;#x27;s been a slow but momentous journey, all totally worth it. I think we&amp;#x27;re all just super excited for what&amp;#x27;s ahead. Moments like these are glimpses into the future, which is looking brighter by the day! GLAMOUR: What influenced your super-mod style? HL: Well, we&amp;#x27;re inspired by the whole mod era, but we try to put a fresh take on it. We play a lot with symmetry, because sonically it&amp;#x27;s that way. We sing in unison a lot, so we try to play off of that style visually. JW: We&amp;#x27;re most inspired by artists with a super visual presence, like David Bowie, or Bjork. Like, it&amp;#x27;s complete and it draws people in automatically. We&amp;#x27;re connected as a band because we&amp;#x27;re uniform in terms of style. GLAMOUR: And last but not least, what are your past and present pop-culture obsessions? JW: As far as music: Django Django, Alt-J, Grimes, and Little Dragon. I also like Japanese street art and the whole Tokyo fashion scene where these girls look like anime dolls. HL: The boys would definitely say Breaking Bad. They&amp;#x27;re obsessed with it. I&amp;#x27;m only on episode seven. JW: Are you watching, Holly? HL: No, I haven&amp;#x27;t been that good about it. JW: I&amp;#x27;m gonna catch up and we can watch together, so we can talk to the guys about it. We&amp;#x27;re behind, but I need to make time to focus because I hear it is so intense. Lucius is amazing, no? You tell me: Will you be buying Wildewoman? You&amp;#x27;re seriously missing out if you don&amp;#x27;t! Photos: Peter Larson"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2013/10/lucius-interview>