As I type these words, the results are in. It’s 5.51pm and I’ve been ignoring the internet all day, knowing that at some point a number will be assigned to my new album. It may well have been published somewhere online already, or is about to be.
So I thought I’d write to you before I read that number. Because, as I wrote to my Correspondent’s Club members this morning:
“We are not defined by things outside our control but by what we put into the world and how we carry ourselves. And I feel good about both of those things today.”
HUGEST thank you for your support and encouragement not only in this hectic week of album releasing, but since you first came across my work. It makes a huge difference knowing I have a friendly group of music fans to share my songs, words and videos with. You are appreciated.
Whatever numbers I read in a few minutes won’t change my belief in the album I shared with you last Friday, and the energy I have for continuing to create experiences around the songs on “House Of Stories”.
As I sang in “Emotional Tourist”: “I’m not finished”.
An album release is a new beginning, not just for those songs starting to find their homes in peoples’ lives and hearts, but for me to start the second hero’s journey of sharing them with people outside this lovely circle.
If you fancy helping me with that, I’ve created a webpage which gathers the album, videos and blog posts all in one handy place to easily share it with new people: http://penfriend.rocks/house-of-stories
Thank you!
Last time I put a record out (in 2023) it took so much out of me that I slumped into a long period where I didn’t write anything new. I’m not letting that happen this time.
Earlier this week I started excavating my piano from being surrounded by boxes of junk, and this morning I got myself set up to receive musical messages again. It feels good.
“Keep the channel open”, said Martha Graham. Too right.
I’m excited to keep sharing my new album “House Of Stories” with you in fun and creative ways over the coming weeks and months, but alongside that I’m commencing experiments for solo album 7.
#2 in the Independent Albums Chart #2 in the Downloads Chart #4 in the Album Sales Chart #10 in the CD Albums Chart #11 in the Vinyl Albums Chart #11 in the Scottish Albums Chart #74 in the Official Albums Chart
And…it’s the fourth-highest charting new entry this week.
Wow.
THANK YOU. You did this!
Now: go and have a lovely weekend. You deserve it.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
I’ve had several messages this week from people who want to support their local independent record shop and buy “House Of Stories” there – a lovely idea! – but in this case please support your local independent artist and buy direct from me
WHY LAURA, WHYYYYY???
Between 2018 and 2024 I did have my records in shops, placed there through a distributor, but due to limited space it’s super competitive trying to get them to stock even 1 or 2 copies…plus they obviously have to charge quite a lot for stocking it and selling it to you.
Printing beautiful vinyl costs me £££££, so the whole thing just wasn’t working out – especially when you were hearing about the records direct from me in the first place!
As a 100% independent artist with no job or funding outside of direct-to-fan record sales and my subscription club, I do everything I can to create beautiful music and merch collections to give the best experience of my work possible, while also paying for everything to be made in the first place. Without pre-orders for “House Of Stories”, there would have been no vinyl, no CDs, no anything else.
Last year I made the decision to quit my physical distribution deal and go back to only selling my music direct. Hello there!
WHY NOW???
All physical sales made by 7.30pm today count towards the Official UK Albums Chart result tomorrow, and all digital purchases made until 23:59 also count BUT ONLY IF YOU DOWNLOAD YOUR DOWNLOADS.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
During the pandemic I remember reading an article about how one of the ways living in close proximity was changing peoples’ relationships was the lack of literal perspective. Standing close to loved ones all the time, rarely getting a chance to step back and see them as a whole person. It has an effect.
I’ve been pondering this while making and sharing music videos for my new album this year. I make my own videos: setting up lights, tripod and everything else I need to shoot, doing my best to make my weird and wonderful ideas come to life on screen, then editing them afterwards.
It’s well-discussed that working with constraints makes you more creative. 3 minutes to tell a story in sound and song. Small budgets, basic equipment, small spaces. Using only what you already have.
But it can be hard to get the feet and legs in. It can be hard to show the full person.
“Emotional Tourist” was shot in my front room, in front of a variety of backdrops. I set the camera up behind my armchair to get a decent shot, but didn’t want to show the mess on both sides, plus my backdrop didn’t go down to the ground. No feet shots possible. Dagnabbit.
I tried to change this for “Space, Man”, hiring a studio in town so I could put the camera a bit further back. But the backdrop wasn’t wide enough again, so you didn’t get to see the white socks I wore to match my inflatable space rocket. I tried.
While filming for “The Life Of The Party”, there was a weird issue with the stage lighting. I couldn’t figure out why it was giving me a totally blue, blown-out face if the camera was set back too far.
If I was calmly filming someone else I might have been able to work it out; dressed in a party frock grasping a ukulele, I did what I always do…my best.
For “In The Light Sometimes” I decided to show the whole picture.
Last summer I spent 54 days in my attic home studio, The Launchpad, recording my new album “House Of Stories”. I decided to show the whole space; the constraints I turned into creativity.
It was only after I hung my new action camera off the attic latch for the top-down shot that I realised my feet would be on video for once. And, though my slipper game is STRONG, I decided to be dead posh for once and change into some nice shoes for the occasion.
This song makes me cry. I hope you enjoy the video.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
July 2024. An attic in Nottingham, UK. I’m way overdue recording my album, and I’m feeling determined.
One afternoon, in the middle of working out guitars parts for a song called “In The Light Sometimes”, a new picked pattern emerges. I feel a surge of energy. I’m excited.
Is this a new song, or just a distraction?
Years ago I heard Neil Young talk on a podcast about how when a song idea presents itself, you should drop everything and work on it. I remember scoffing at the time – easy for you to say, I thought.
I’m literally sitting at my computer with my guitar in my hand, time set aside to create a new collection of songs.
As my favourite quote goes, “Inspiration finds you working” (thanks, Picasso).
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Her Grammy acceptance speech showed up in my feed, so I looked her up. I read she’d risen to prominence after creating YouTube vlogs during the pandemic, so I went to her channel and tried to find her earliest video. My internet was being weird and just showed me this one.
She talks into her laptop, eating crisps, saying she’s just been fired from her job and she doesn’t care. She says she’s going to try and get an internship at a record label.
It’s not an interesting video on its own. She gives no context and no details. There’s no resolution, no takeaway. If you don’t know her, and you’re in an impatient mood, you’d likely shrug and say “and…?”
But that’s not the point – she wasn’t trying to “do” YouTube, she was documenting a real moment in her life, in real-time.
Five years on, Doechii has won a Grammy for best rap album, plus two MTV Video Music Awards, a BET Award, two Soul Train Music Awards and the Rising Star Award from Billboard Women in Music.
Five hours on from watching her video, I’d seen it pop up another 10 times around the internet.
Weird.
Two nights ago, I started reading “Manifest” by Roxie Nafousi, a cheerful orange hardback that’s been sitting on my To Read pile for a year. For whatever reason, it felt like the right moment to start making some changes. I read about the science of it, the quantum physics theory that we attract the energy we put out into the world. We have control over that – we can choose to vibrate at a higher frequency, to attract higher frequency things. We decide what we want to do, we put the work in, we vibrate.
Interesting.
Last night I dipped into my blog archives to try and find something well-written and timeless to share with you today1. At random I picked out a piece I wrote in 2020.
Inspired by a podcast chat I’d had with comedian Bec Hill2, I wrote about the need to zoom out from your current busy day-to-day work life to set goals beyond the old-you dream you’re currently maintaining.
A few months after our conversation was published, Bec was announced as the host of a new kids’ TV crafting show. It didn’t happen to her out of the blue – this is something she had decided she wanted, and had aimed her efforts towards. She was absolutely perfect for it, and did a great job.
Did I pick that blog post out because I’d already started vibrating at a higher frequency? (I didn’t see the date til I’d re-read the whole thing.)
Is that also why I suddenly heard about Doechii and found that particular video of hers from 5 years ago? (I don’t usually read up on the latest music news.)
Five years is a good block of time to measure things by.
In five years, Doechii went from being fired from a job she didn’t care about to winning a Grammy. (I look forward to learning more about that journey.)
Five years ago, I had recently ended my solo music project of 15 years to launch a new one, Penfriend, in May 2020. I was living in Bristol, recording music by myself in a colourful attic room. A pandemic was right around the corner. I’d started running twice a week, and was making my third and final bid to complete the famous Julia Cameron book “The Artist’s Way” (I did it!). I’d made a list of ways I wanted to change my life in this fresh new decade, and I was taking positive steps every day.
In February 2025, I’m working out of a different colourful attic studio in Nottingham. I’m still doing my thing, maintaining my 5-years-ago-me dream. And what a gift! It’s still one of my current-me dreams, but I know that I’ve put any future-me dreams on hold to keep the wheels turning.
It’s time to start making some new plans. It’s time to dream big again.
When violent, racist narcissists are causing chaos on the world stage, hurting people every day with their actions, it feels ridiculous to write about manifesting. When genocide is ignored, when our bodily autonomy is in the hands of powerful men, when trans rights are being erased, when tech bros have WAY too much influence and N*zi salutes go unpunished, it can feel redundant to focus on my own supposed day-to-day problems, let alone my future plans and dreams. What do I matter in all of this?
I’ll never forget a post I saw a few years ago that read: “It’s not manifesting: it’s white privilege”.
I’ll carry that reminder with me. It’s important to check ourselves.
But I’m still going to dream big, because I exist too, and I can be more helpful to everyone when I’m vibrating at a higher frequency.
I’m thankful for the life I manifested through my previous actions, thankful for those who make this possible by supporting independent music, and thankful to inspirational figures like Doechii, Roxie and Bec for reminding me that the future is full of possibility.
Where were you 5 years ago? Where do you want to be 5 years from now?
Let’s dream big together. Let’s take care of each other.
I failed. I found two fatal flaws with my idea of sharing that older piece with you:
1) It contains a paragraph about a recently disgraced author which is central to the point I’m making, and he can absolutely do one.
2) I’d somehow confused the words “infinite” and “infinitesimal”, which are basically opposites, and the sting of embarrassment is too fresh in my mind to consider reposting it.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
What to do when everyone doesn’t love you on the internet
Dear fellow artist and interested internet person, I am here to coin a new phrase.
Allow me to introduce the HUUIG aka the Hitherto-Unknown, Unfriendly Internet Gentleman. Not to be confused with a New Fan Of Your Work (NFOYW), this esteemed surfer of the internet superhighway is usually brand new to you, choosing to show up in your life for the very first time sounding something like this:
We all know that when we share ourselves on the internet: in words, photos, daubs on a page or, in my case, music and video, we’re opening a can of worms and inviting them to crawl all over us and our painfully exposed vulnerabilities.
Some of these “worms”2 are delighted to hear from us, thrilled to stumble across meaningful work that speaks to them, speaks for them, heals them, brightens their day or, at the very least, provides respite from yet another fucking Temu3 ad.
I regret calling these people “worms”, even though it’s a clever metaphor, because they are the ones who keep the wheels turning. I wouldn’t have a job without them. They might be YOU. Thank you!
You’re a name, not a worm-ber.
Receiving positive messages about your work is life-affirming and galvanising.
“My work will find its audience”, you tell yourself with relief, while still trying to figure out exactly how many vertical clips and text-based social media posts will make you feel you’ve done enough to send your offering into the world with the best possible chance4.
Unfortunately, alongside enjoying interactions with these kind, generous and encouraging patrons of the arts, we are forced to bear witness to a whole bunch of nonsense from people who I’m far less sorry to refer to as worms (though this is very much still a metaphor). Rude, rude worms.
Because, you see, what you made doesn’t suit them exactly. The snare sound you carefully chose for your song5 that you wrote and recorded yourself in your attic home studio during yet another pandemic lockdown isn’t the one they would have chosen had they had the wherewithal to make that exact song, so you are wrong, friend, and they are not going to let it go!
Or, obviously, you’re a “tattooed slut” because…you have tattoos and are a woman sharing your wholesome, bike-riding music video with the world?6
Um.
In this case, I am the lowest of the low because I used the word “motherfucker” twice. Fucking hell. The absolute cheek!
In a song about escaping from a potentially murderous ex-boyfriend, written to share my experience in a bid to put words to other peoples’ perhaps-hidden experiences of the same or worse, written because that’s the song that wanted to be written that day and it turned into a bona fide banger7, I both swore and showed (justified) anger.
It’s just the truth. So fucking sue me!
In 88 songs spread over seven albums and some stand-alone singles I have sworn a total of 8 times. I stand by every single fuck, fucking, shit and motherfucker. I chose to put those words in those songs because that’s where they had to go.
Oh, and because artists can and should do whatever the hell they want in their work8, because that’s what art is. Please remember this above all other things.
To answer an inevitable question: yes, of course I read the comments. I want to see what impact my work has on other humans. Also, I work alone. Who else is meant to read them9?
It’s annoying, because I share things on the internet in search of actual human connection. I’m not hunting digital applause, requesting smoke be blown up my arse10 or hankering for a viral moment. Please PLEASE no.
It’s a shame that when I see a Facebook notification I automatically cringe, assuming it’s going to be something awful, because that’s the platform where I usually get the bad stuff11.
However, in my experience, these people usually only pop out of the woodwormwork when prompted by:
– an album release: I always get a shitty email from a HUUIG12 on album release day, either to tell me I suck or that I stole an idea off them –
OR
– a paid ad (how very dare you try to get your heartfelt, handcrafted work into the hands of the people! What are you, someone who needs to eat?!!!)
OR, probably
– great success and massively increased exposure. I have no experience of this.
Because I am a very lucky person, last week I got not one but TWO freebies.
Part 2:
Oh, how I laughed and laughed. 5 years ago I can’t honestly say I’d have been amused at this exchange, but I like to think I’ve grown up a lot in that time. Quoting God/Jesus/etc back at him was not in any way a childish thing to do.
There was a time when an email or comment from someone criticising me and/or what I had dared to share would make me furious: not because they didn’t like me, but because they thought it was okay to go out of their way to interrupt my day to tell me. I would take time to reply, incredibly politely, letting them know I’m a real life human being – not a team of people or robots – and reminding them that not everything in the world is made for them. I wanted them to rethink their approach and stop bothering people who are just trying their best in the world.
But, strangely, after making all that effort to get my attention, none of them ever wrote back. And I thought they wanted to be friends!
I stopped doing this when I decided to spend that energy on the people who love what I do.
In 2025, with a new single coming out every month up to the release of my new album “House Of Stories” in April, I definitely don’t have time for this shit13.
Here’s my current thinking on neggy comments from HUUIGs14. I hope it helps.
It’s unrealistic to think that everyone who comes across your stuff online is going to love it and gush at you about it, and honestly wouldn’t that be WEIRD? I would have a hard time trusting myself or anyone else without some sort of resistance.
We set ourselves up for avoidable stress and upset if we don’t account for, say, 5-10% of all comments we receive online being irritating or downright rude.
Personally, when I dislike something I just keep on scrolling or, ideally, turn my stupid phone off and do what I’d planned to be doing which is usually making stuff15. Others are not so strong.
Others don’t have the lives they want, or are in a sad or bad mood, or just broke up with someone, or have been poisoned by social media into binary thinking so if they don’t like something they go straight to HATE and simply have to tell you all about it. Some people are autistic, and come across in a far more blunt way than they intend. Some people have severe mental health issues and I genuinely hope they have the help they need.
Unfortunately, every comment and message looks basically the same in our homogenised online world. There’s no way of knowing what situation the sender is in, mentally or physically. And that’s good, because I don’t need to know you’re on the loo writing me a message, whether it’s a nice one or a nasty one. But it’s also bad, because if you could tell the difference between someone being nasty to you because they’re a hateful person and someone writing unkind things because they really need some help, you could choose to respond in different ways, or not at all.
I want to live in a world where the segment of people who are just plain hateful keyboard warrior arsehole pricks is a very small segment. A tiny segment of tiny pricks. Except they’re not tiny are they, they’re HUUIG16!
I want to believe that most people are decent, and would be, if not gushingly enthusiastic of my work, reasonably supportive of my general right to make and share it without receiving neggy messages sent direct to my eyeballs.
However, I spent 5 years working as a part-time comment moderator for The Guardian UK website, and grew skeptical of the value of online comments on most platforms. Not yours, of course, and not here. You’re great!
I’m not telling you any of this to justify myself to Bob my latest HUUIG17. I’m telling you this to remind you that YOU don’t have to justify yourself to Bob any HUUIG18 (or, fine, HUUIP19 – though in my experience they’re always G’s) who decides to send a comment death ray your way.
You’re here, and we need you and your work. So, somehow, you have to find a way to laugh it off, to file it in the metaphorical bin (hide/delete comments, mute/block people), and/or to use it as material for a piece of writing that might hopefully help someone else find a way to laugh it off, file it in the metaphorical bin, or use it as material for a piece of…
Yes. We can do this! We can follow our creative energy, turn lemons into lemonade and transform attacks on our disrespectful vulgar crude filthy foul mouth into something beautiful.
That’s exactly what I did with my new single “Emotional Tourist” aka the “motherfucker” song, and OH THE IRONY of receiving a list of the things someone doesn’t like about me:
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
I recommend Seth’s Social Media Escape Club as an antidote to these crazy-making thoughts, while admitting I succumb to them often. I make next-to-zero vertical clips because this line of thinking makes me seize up entirely and get six hours behind on my already ambitious task list for the day, and it’s always better to put any energy I can muster into writing pieces like this, emailing my lovely subscribers or doing almost anything else.
Yesterday I was weak, and I commented on a company’s Instagram reel about how they should have hired a person to do the voiceover instead of shitty AI. I’m not perfect, but I am right.
When I was a little girl, one of my favourite possessions was a shoebox that I filled up with bits of paper, envelopes and leaflets gathered from wherever I could find them. I called it my Post Office, and every now and then I’d take the box from under the bed and pour my treasure out on the floor.
I’m hazy on the details, but I remember loving to “play Post Office”, which I imagine meant sorting the assorted paper into different piles and then putting them back in the box. Oh, how the interests of our youth can creep up on us as adults, writes the woman who spent a happy evening last week reorganising her boxes of scrap paper, stickers and magazine pages by category.
Nerd alert.
Later, somehow, I ended up writing letters to children I’d never met, who lived far away – Svetlana in Belarus and Alastair in Derbyshire. It was utterly magical to send my closely-written pages to people I would never talk to in person, carefully copying the unfamiliar Russian words onto Svet’s envelopes well enough for her to receive my missives. I only ever know my letters had arrived when she replied.
It was to Alastair I first proudly declared my aim to be a songwriter when I grew up – having never written a single song, and knowing nothing whatsoever about how to do so. Letter-writing predated those heady days when I started to discover my favourite bands by some years, but both activities were a youthful statement of independent thought at an age where actions were largely dictated by adults.
As I grew older I gathered more people to write to. My family moved every three years, so there were always friends left behind, and in my early teens I wrote to kids I met on school trips, boys at other schools, even friends at the same school as me. We challenged each other to fill up more and more pages and somehow still had enough left to say to talk on the phone for hours in the evening. The freedom I found to express myself in letters is one of my fondest memories of childhood.
On my journey into adulthood, switching to email and blogging and Twitter (2007-style) felt intuitive, but my love for words written by hand on paper never left me.
As I released music on CD, vinyl and cassette from 2009 onwards, I got to “play Post Office” more and more regularly, and my role as the maker and sender of things became clear.
Writing songs and dispatching them into the world, in whatever format, is a natural progression from the innate desire I had to connect with others from a young age.
And that, dear reader, is why I’m called Penfriend.
“The internet” was a destination. I raced home from work to “go on it”, and happily replaced my previous TV-watching with clicking around, finding out about the world and other people, mainly through reading personal blogs. It was quite unusual to be someone regularly “surfing the internet superhighway”, online ordering was wildly exciting because you had to trust it was real (and high street shopping sucked), and finding places to stay in European cities was, weirdly, easier because there wasn’t infinite choice.
When short-form text-based social media came along in the form of Twitter, I let it steal my writing energy. I still wrote regular, friendly emails to my growing mailing list (which is why I have a job doing this today, honestly), but any public writing was sporadic at best. And this from a person who breathlessly read Writing magazine when she was 13 years old, dreaming of her certain future as a novelist.
I shake my fist at the social media oligarchs in the sky, but mostly at myself. Silly.
I’m not interested in wanging on about the platform I’m sharing stuff on – that’s too meta1 for me, but suffice it to say I’m delighted to be stretching my writing-in-public muscles again, and excited to be here amongst friends.
I’m a long-form person. I make albums, not single songs. I am having a wonderful time delving into the long-form thoughts of brilliant minds, and I only wish there hadn’t been that break in the middle where I felt like I was surfing that superhighway alone.
Writing is the best, I love it, and I’m going to keep doing it. Reading is a close second.
From one solo home-working nerd to many others, I thank you for reading.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Last Wednesday I released “Emotional Tourist”, my first new song in two years and the first single from my seventh solo album “House Of Stories”.
It’s like this:
Fierce, wonky and unapologetic, it details the demise of a relationship where I was ground down by a narcissist to the point where he tried to set fire to the house and “I didn’t even think to scream”.
The song reasserts my right to tell my own story in my own words, after being told again and again it was wrong of me to do so: shameful, predatory, arrogant. Selfish.
When you’re told by your chosen person that the thing you do best, that you care about the most, is a grubby endeavour – that can be tough to shake, even if it never quite rang true.
Come on…I’m a songwriter, not a tabloid journalist.
The thing is, every one of the 77 songs I’ve released so far is about a person I know, and/or an actual thing that happened in my life.
Songwriting is how I process stuff: I work out how I feel by writing it down, thinking about it and, 77 times to date, spending many hours and many ££s crafting my thoughts and feelings into a song to share with other people.
It’s not not a weird thing to do, but there are a lot of human behaviours I find more peculiar. See above.
Writing personal songs and sharing them is nothing new. But it is a new thing for me to share so bluntly the real-life events1 that propelled a song into being.
My songs are an invitation: containers of time, sound and space for you to pour your own experiences into. You’re smart; you don’t need me to over-explain them. At a certain point, they’re not even about me any more.
In the case of “Emotional Tourist”, though, it felt important to explain that the “smoke in the house” isn’t a metaphor for me. It can be, and hopefully is, for everyone else hearing the song – and that goes for every factual snippet from my life that I bury in the poetry of my lyrics.
“In the particular is contained the universal”, wrote James Joyce to a friend. I agree. Unfortunately, the particular type of situation I was in isn’t an unusual one. That’s why I made it into a song, and why I’m writing about it outside of the lyrics.
The song has been publicly available for 8 days, and I’ve already had four people get in touch to thank me for validating their own experiences. In turn, that helped to validate mine.
This is what art does: it holds up a mirror, it supports us, it connects us, sometimes it even heals us. Making it – and immersing myself in art created by others – has helped heal me so many times I’ve lost count.
Every day since releasing the song, the video and this piece detailing what the song is really about, I’ve wondered if I’ll hear from that person, or from his family. What would they say? What would I say?
I don’t think what I’ve done is wrong. I don’t feel guilty about this. Everyone has a right to tell their side of the story. Not everyone has to like me, agree with me, or like what I do.
That feels good to write.
A dear friend shared “Emotional Tourist” online last week, describing it as “an infectious, rightfully scathing (I remember the guy) yet beautifully melodic synth-rock-pop song that should be a dead cert for the drive-time radio A-list”. That was a real boost, thank you Ben2.
Because, yeah, it’s uncomfortable to extract something so personal, reversing the abstraction from poetry to prose. But when I feel nervous about something, thinking maybe it is – or indeed I am – “too much”, I remember being told so bluntly that “I shouldn’t write about what’s real” and I think about the ways we make ourselves small for other people, and I think “fuck you” and I make, write or share the thing.
I am thankful and grateful and all the -fuls for the secure, happy, nourishing relationship I’ve been in for the past 10 years, and not only because it has helped push my songwriting beyond the more reactive angles of my earliest work.
As I continue to create albums, it’s my job to continually fill the well of creativity so there’s always something to write about. I thank the sun, moon and stars that my day-to-day personal life is almost completely drama-free, which prompts me to look outside myself more often and go deeper into pivotal moments from my past.
Even with 77 songs out in the world, there are plenty of unprocessed moments to take care of, plenty of dawning realisations that something I thought was normal really REALLY wasn’t.
In 2022-2023 those shadows kept creeping up and tapping me on the shoulder with cold, bony fingers, dragging me back into the past on a much-too-regular basis.
That’s why I decided making my new album “House Of Stories” would help me bravely turn back and face up to some of the most intense and/or heartbreaking episodes of my life. Not to blame or shame any individual, not to elevate my own status, but to:
1. Figure out why these things still had the power to bring me to my knees, in a bid to reclaim that power for myself;
2. Create something beautiful out of my experiences, hopefully making something helpful (for me and others) out of some really shitty situations;
3. Use my now-very-VERY great wisdom to reflect on all the things that happened which are still bothering me, for which the common denominator is always MOI, in a bid to learn and grow and go forward in life avoiding unnecessary drama;
4. Forgive myself where appropriate, even if others involved don’t think they were in any way at fault and/or don’t remember what happened.
I make sad songs to make you feel better™3, and I’m happy to report they make me feel better too.
Have a wonderful day and PLEASE make, write and/or share the thing. I believe in you.
Love, Laura xxx
PS my new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available to order NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Get two songs in your inbox immediately, with another every month til the release date in April (before anyone else gets to listen).
PPS Lab coats and pointers make you feel – and look – clever. The evidence:
I’ve been describing my music this way for years and I just love it. I also describe it as ‘‘music for people who love handwritten letters” but that might be more about justifying my typewriter collection.↩︎
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Day 8 of my daily index card collage challenge. "Gobblin' Time" - get it? Original monster by Zozoville.
Next Wednesday 15th January I’m releasing my first new song in two years.1
“Emotional Tourist” is the first single I’m sharing publicly2 from my seventh solo album “House Of Stories”.
I’m probably supposed to be “excited to announce…” or “delighted to introduce…” but, 15 years after the first time I was excited to announce a single3, I’m hoping to stretch my vocabulary.
It’s not that I’m not excited, or indeed delighted. I’m both, and more. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the words I write on the matter are essential to encouraging, persuading and intriguing you towards tapping “play” and giving my song a chance.
I also know that writing “I’m excited to announce that my new song is out now” is a waste of everyone’s time.
I’m…Who is this person? Excited…I’ve read that word a thousand times already today – next! Announce…Where are we, a train station? My…Sorry, why are you in my feed again? I don’t know you. New song…Every song I haven’t heard yet is new, what difference does the release date make to me? Out now…Ohhh, is this an advert? Ugh, I hate being advertised to, no thanks.
A large chunk of my time as a full-time solo artist and self-facilitating media node4 is spent creating excitement around things I made a while ago.
I embrace this.
Andy J. Pizza, of the wonderful, changed-my-life podcast Creative Pep Talk, recently shared a series of episodes around the second Hero’s Journey. He called it the “Journey Of The True Fan”5, and it’s very helpful.
If the first Hero’s Journey sees the hero – yes, you – bravely leaving your metaphorical home to adventure out into the world, battling through adversity to find the elixir, the second is where you bring the elixir home to share with your people, the ones who need it just as much as you do.
What’s the elixir? It’s what you make – what you want to make. What you’re called to make. What you haven’t made yet…but you’re going to make. When you make that thing, wouldn’t you like to share it with people? And wouldn’t that feel more comfortable and less intimidating/gross/cringey if you believed that what you made would help them in some way?
It’s true, you know. Art heals. Songs create spaces for people to feel their feelings. Music is a collaboration between the people making the sounds, and the people listening.
If my song comes out next Wednesday and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Not really.
My song isn’t worthless if no-one listens to it. It can be enough that I pulled it out from deep within my psyche and put the time, energy and focus in to make it into something that could be played to another human. That’s fine.
But it’s ok to want people to listen / watch / read too. And I do. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. And it’s (currently) my full-time job (thanks to generous music fans who choose to pay for something they could listen to for free).
I crave connection with other humans. Many of us do.
So, there would be very little point to me going to all the fuss of writing and recording my songs, having them professionally mixed and mastered and commissioning an artist to illustrate the album cover if I wasn’t prepared to spend time and energy on communicating my excitement and delight at my single being OUT NOW.
If you make art that you want people to experience, respond to and potentially heal from, this second Hero’s Journey is essential, and in my experience it’s not best spent:
Complaining on the internet about how we’re being forced to become “content creators”. Snore. No-one is forcing you to do anything. No-one is expecting you to make music / paint / write / make videos / anything. They don’t know you exist.
Why not spend that energy sharing your work in an interesting way? Every single time I see this post from an artist I wish they’d just shared a little story about their art instead.
Publicly railing against the powers that be while doing nothing in real life to create lasting change and/or finding interesting ways to share your art despite the raw deal we genuinely do get.
Announcing that you’re “excited” and “delighted” that your new song/book/video is OUT NOW!!!
Damn. So…what should I do instead? My single is out in less than a week! Fuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!
While I’m truly aiming to avoid the words “excited” and “delighted” this time round, it is important to be keyed up, galvanised or otherwise invigorated about our work. If we don’t feel it, the people we’re hoping to invite to appreciate it certainly won’t.
I know “House Of Stories” is my best album yet7, but instead of excitement / delightment I’m going for a quiet confidence, an open-hearted generosity of spirit and a desire to use my words to go deeper into what my 11 new songs are about, how I felt when I wrote them and how I feel about them now.
The time for musing and pondering is upon me. More soon.
Here’s what I do know: I make sad songs to make you feel better. I share music humbly to create honest, positive and potentially healing experiences for you. And I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities that exist to share our work through myriad digital spaces, reaching out across the ether to make connections with other humans (that’s you – hi!)
I just think we can find deeper and more resonant ways to share our stories – preferably without quite so much shouting.
Another thing I’ve picked up from my 20 years of writing on the internet is to leave the reader with one simple Call To Action.
Unfortunately, in this essay I decided to do a Stewart Lee8 / Katie Lee9 and include many humorous footnotes, thereby fucking up any real chance I may have earned of you taking the required next action to listen to my new song.
You’ll receive next week’s single “Emotional Tourist” + the title track “House Of Stories” in your inbox immediately, with a new song every month up to the release date in April 2025.
Hooray!
Thanks for reading. I’m excited and delighted you’re here.
Love, Laura xxx
Aside from “Our Last Christmas”, which came out in early December. That one had a short shelf life, for obvious reasons…but I’m really glad I made this video for it in a Berlin Christmas market. It wasn’t at all weird wandering around filming myself and whispering the lyrics at double speed. I just have a weird job – and I love it! ↩︎
Members of my Correspondent’s Club received it on New Year’s Eve, and people who have already pre-ordered my album received it shortly afterwards. Only the best for the best. ↩︎
My first single “Let This Be” was released under the name She Makes War in April 2010. This self-directed music videostars Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton and now Hollywood fame. Yes, 15 years ago my then-boyfriend’s little brother was keen for any experience on set, and he was always lovely to hang out with. Thanks, Regé! I’m SO proud of you. ↩︎
Behold Andy’s “Journey Of The True Fan” series – parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. He’s here on Substack being awesome, too. ↩︎
Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka pop goddess Self Esteem said “it’s just songs” in this episode of my podcast “Attention Engineer” in February 2021 – just before she casually became (aka worked her arse off to become) a bona fide pop star. Well done, RLT! I’d love to do an “after they were famous” followup episode… ↩︎
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Tap to get your FREE 12-track album + 31-page PDF zine of stories, photographs and artwork here.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Music fans got it to #2 in the Official UK Independent Album Chart in April 2025. Bonkers!
Join The Correspondent’s Club on Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Listen to my first Penfriend album “Exotic Monsters” and browse my back catalogue here.
If you make things too – or want to know more about the creative process – I’m sharing thoughtful weekly essays here on my experiments in art, music and life on Substack (and I won’t be at all offended if you prefer to read my stuff there rather than on this absolutely gorgeous website).
Chat with me on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
