L'Aura returns: “The last time there was still iTunes”
“The last time I made a record there was still iTunes,” quips L'Aura. It was 2017 when Laura Abela, this is the real name of the singer-songwriter from Brescia, protagonist of the pop-rock of the 2000s with hits such as “Radio stars” And “Today” (the debut album “Okumuki” won the 2005 Platinum record for the equivalent of 100 thousand copies sold, when records were selling in earnest, ten years before streaming), he released his latest recording project, “The opposite of love”. Seven years later, the musician returns to the scene, ready to inaugurate a new chapter in her career. Forget, however, the intimate and alternative singer-songwriter who in Sanremo in 2006 accompanied himself on the piano on “
Unattainable” and that in 2008, again on the Ariston stage, on “Enough” was accompanied by the supergroup Rezophonic, made up of leading names from the Italian rock scene of the 1990s and 2000s. At 39 years old the rockeuse from Brescia shows another side of herself with the new single “Pastiglie”, released today: “In recent years I have wondered what my future was. I tried to explore new musical avenues. Working on the piano was an operation that did not allow me to update my way of writing: I started studying music composition software, starting with Pro Tools”.
The new single was born like this. And in terms of sound it marks a turning point in L'Aura's career. The reference sound universe is no longer the alternative rock of the 90s, but the80s electropop: “Starting from the beat, from the rhythmic part, and working on those sounds, allowed me to write things in another way, more anchored to the present. There's no point in beating around the bush: today's way of writing is no longer the way it was twenty years ago. The ways in which music is enjoyed have changed. I try to adapt to the times. 'Pastiglie' is a frank, dynamic and very pop song: a bit like me after all”.
The pills he talks about in the song “are metaphorical, not physical”: “I'm talking about finding your place in the world. Yet another crisis of mine has allowed me to understand that all our problems derive from the relationship we have with society, with expectations. Society demands things from people that people are unable to give. The fact of always having to outperform, always being on track, is not sustainable. I play in another league, that of those who have accepted failure as something that is part of life: you may not always be on top of things. I'm not capable of it and I accept it. I'll be a little slower than others, but never mind.”
If we wanted to find a link with L'Aura's artistic background, we could say that “Pastiglie” is a sort of “Sour acid” in ultrapop version, at least conceptually: “I listened to Prozac when I was a kid. And then I'm very good friends with Eva Poles (the singer of the group, ed.). There is certainly a reference to that period and that song, because it is the music I grew up with. But it has nothing to do with punk, also because the guitars in the music that goes around today have literally disappeared.” In 2021 L'Aura independently published the EP “Hygge volume 1”. Now there is a new contract with a multinational, Warner: “But talking about records is now taboo. You only get to talking about albums when you've already started a discussion. I stopped mine a while ago. Meanwhile there's this single: it's a way to start again from where we left off, then we'll see”.
