Empress Of Coming to The Crocodile on March 5, 2019

“Can I make it clear?” Lorely Rodriguez asks within the opening moments of her debut album, Me. If clarity is what she seeks, Lorely has found it: her voice upfront, every word audible and strong. Her singular voice is the centerpiece of Me, her first full-formed vision of an album, following her previously shorter and more abstract releases as Empress Of. “Don’t tell me who I am,” she sings seconds later.

On a cold January morning, Lorely sits at the kitchen table at her current sublet apartment, sifting through a composition book, pages of lyrics stained by coffee and cognac, shuffling through photo prints from the trip to Mexico where she wrote the initial sketches of the record. The album is filtered through imagery from this 5-week retreat, a lens through which Lorely looks both inward and outward, reflects and looks forward, finds strength and vulnerability.

Where her previous recordings worked in moody abstractions, layered soundscapes hinting at a voice deep under the surface, Me plays out like diary entries from one female voice musing on the personal, the political, and all the middle ground between. “I’ve been living below the standard with a hunger that feeds the fire / I’ve been eyeing your plate of diamonds,” sings Lorely on “Standard,” a reflection on privilege and entitlement.

The band will be performing at The Crocodile in Seattle on March 5th, 2019. Tickets can be found here.

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