There are some artists who just sound so inherently comfortable in their music that it’s impossible to imagine them never not making it. The kind of musician whose voice might as well be that of a modern day siren, or an ageless storyteller; the kind of tone with their singing that seems like it has surely always existed. Lauren Spear (aka Le Ren) is one of these talents, someone whose music sounds so neat, effortless, and enduring, that its appeal stretches generations.
On her sophomore album, Don’t Be Funny Without Me, Spear carries the same delicacy of her debut Leftovers but brings in some more friends to gently add some layers and motion. Recorded in Mountain Grove, Ontario, Spear self-produced the album with old friends Fez Gielen and Jonas Bonetta. Don’t Be Funny has the countenance of pals gathering together and also that of an artist who knows their strengths and settles comfortably into them. It’s unquestionably pretty and tidy folk/Americana but not without a loose air when a fuller band comes into the picture.
“Gold In California” is a wistful road song with advice for the lovelorn (“Has no one ever told you / There’s still plenty of / Gold that you can find in California”) but the drums and frizzy electric guitar help propel it along. Similarly “Otherwise, I’m Fine” skips along with a buoyant drum track and a building fuzz in the background. “Free Wheeling” brings a folksy swagger as Trent Freeman’s fiddle sees the track out as it disappears into the distance.
The softer, gentler moments don’t get lost either: the album’s bookending tracks find Spear alone at the piano, lamenting at first (“He said a song could love you back / So I keep singing his”) but resolving on finding self worth (“My songs will love me back / My songs! / My songs!”). “Every Age” carries forward the acoustic slightness of Leftovers, a banjo and pedal steel gently brushing up against Spear’s acoustic guitar as she unfurls a deepening love by wishing she could see their significant other as they grew into the person they are today. The joy in relief on “Eternally” is there without any need to go beyond a soft exhale; “Eternally free / From being one thing,” Spear sings with an optimistic glow.
For those very welcome layers, Don’t Be Funny sits just above Leftovers in terms of replay and overall quality. There are tracks here that will serve Spear for an entire career: “Otherwise, I’m Fine” is ripe with quotable lines aspiring authors wish they came up with to open their novels; the title track is has a worn in and timeless heartache to it as Spear requests “Don’t be funny without me / Cause when you’re laughing / It makes me want to cry”; and “Going Through The Motions” could almost be read as a playful self-effacing quip as she posits “I said I’d try to change / But I just stayed the same.”
The album does lose a little momentum in the latter half (the first side boasting more energetic numbers), but this also feels deliberate as Spear works through the initial passion of a romance and then into the more sombre twinges of her heart; it’s more a slowing down to take stock of what’s around and what matters. And what matters most? It is, as quoted earlier, the songs (“My songs!”); they will last an age and perhaps beyond. These feel like songs that could very much love you back.
