Premiere: Lo carves an exciting path with her debut EP, Plan For An Independent Future

One of our favourite premieres from earlier this year came from Lo, the new solo project from Perth favourite Lauren O'Hara who, over the years, you might've recognised from alt-pop duo stage favourite Flossy. Armed with her debut single Floating, the birth of Lo came with an exciting hint of the city's future next-generation, aligning herself with the almost-angelic heavyweights of Angel Olsen and Fiona Apple as she carved a more reflective, emotionally-powered sound in comparison to Flossy's often-angry and passionate reflection on societal issues and mental health.

"This is a project I’ve been working towards since I picked up the guitar at 13 and discovered how liberating songwriting is," she introduced the project to us earlier this year. "I’ve always bounced around with genres, finding a way to create songs that sonically represent my inner thoughts and feelings. I had many people pushing me to record an EP, and I’m so grateful they did, as it forced me to finalise what this project actually is. It feels so personal and intimate. I like to write about confusion, desperation, desire; all the things that drive us, yet all the things that flatten us, too."

Skip forward a few months, and Lo is quickly building a profile as a newfound star in powerful, emotive indie, born from a musical ecosystem so notorious for them in the past: Stella Donnelly, Carla Geneve, and so on. Today, she premieres her debut EP Plan For An Independent Future, a release that encapsulates not just Lauren's built-up craft over the years - both as a solo musician and as a part of Flossy - but also her ability to hone in on passionate, empowering songwriting, and everything that may bring.

It's five tracks that feature Lauren in focus, standing tall in plain site without anything hidden away. It's one of the most intimate and personal records you'll hear - definitely out of Perth, at least - rich with an intensity that places her alongside those aforementioned comparatives in Donnelly and Geneve; her songwriting at its most potent as her vocal twists and turns amongst subtle melodies built from elegant guitar work and gentle, rhythmic paces. 

Throughout the duration of Plan For An Independent Future, you slowly get to know the person behind it all, and the complexities that make musicians of this calibre who they are. It's introspective and reflective; the potency of emo-pop women that have very well become their own sub-genre of sorts (a semi-recent viral tweet saw someone write that their "favourite genre is an angry, passionate woman with a guitar") on feature display albeit in a new way through Lo, who carves a sound that seeks to sit a touch differently to the rest.

"The EP is an attempt to be better, to open up when your head is screaming with fears and insecurity,” she says on the EP. "It touches on self-loathing, desire and desperation while painfully trying to remain hopeful."

There's a lot to dive into here, but you definitely get the idea that Plan For An Independent Future is a release where the music does much of the talking, and it's tough to put into words the emotional complexity that underlays it. So, with that in mind, we'll get straight to it and allow you to dive into the record below, a day early:

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