The club Bardot was very packed for School Night and contrarily to all these people I didn’t know what to expect,… LP? Is that really the name of the band? Again, another ungoogleable name, seriously!
LP, real name Laura Pergolizzi, a young and petite woman dressed up like a guy with a head full of brown locks, took the stage with her four musicians, and wow, as soon as she opened her mouth, people were on the floor, as her voice was really powerful, operatic and effortless.
Most of the songs were epic, with that bombastic potential, a touch of folk music (thanks to the ukulele, the old fashioned upright bass), sometimes even taking a R&B dance tempo (‘Wasted Love’), with more poppy hooks than you can handle, while opening a large space for her wild voice to unleash all her strength and range. And did I mention the whistling? She was whistling on ‘Into The Wild’ with the same vigor that she was singing and it was bringing a special and unique tone to her composition.
I read in a Rolling Stone interview that she qualifies her music of ‘arena folk-rock’ which seems to make perfect sense when listening to her soaring, sing-along, crowd-pleaser choruses,… so move over Bono, Pergolizzi’s big voice could sure fill a stadium by itself, reaching new highs with ‘Tokyo Sunrise’, sexy and dance-y during ‘Wasted Love’, or ‘Someday’, while taking some operatic detours on this one. People were clapping and dancing, hooked at the first notes of the super-catchy songs and the modulations of her deep and warm voice.
She was celebrating the release of LP’s 5-song EP (I know, very confusing!) appropriately entitled ‘Into The Wild’, and recorded live at EastWest Studios (you can buy it here http://www.iamlp.com/#album and stream it below).
She moved on stage with a real confidence, expressively moving her arms when she was not playing her ukulele, stepping into the close crowd, smiling and laughing a lot, and talking between the songs. She definitively had a very strong stage presence and is obviously born to perform, you just have to wonder why did she wait so long? In fact Laura Pergolizzi was busy writing songs for other artists, and not minor ones: astonishingly she wrote ‘Cheers’ with Rihanna and another song with Christina Aguilera while continuing writing her own songs. She also did a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ and Beyonce’s ‘Halo’, and is currently working on a full-length album with Chairman of Warner Bros. Records Rob Cavallo! So expect to see her breaking big soon.
'You may recognize this one', she said before singing her last song 'Into The Wild',… oh sure, it was for that Citi Bank commercial!