Lisa Loeb CD Reflects Split
“The Way” tells tales of a breakup in the making
For the past year, Lisa Loeb and Dweezil Zappa’s relationship has been beamed into living rooms across the country, courtesy of the Food Network’s cooking show Dweezil and Lisa. Now, in the wake of their recent breakup, Loeb returns to the subject matter of “Stay (I Missed You),” her chart-topping hit that first introduced her to audiences a decade ago.
Loeb’s fourth album, The Way It Really Is, is due August 3rd, and it plays a bit like a novella of a decaying romance. “We just ended a six-year relationship, and it was time to move forward to the next stages,” she says. “My past albums are a similar deal: very prophetic, and I don’t even know it when it’s happening.”
The songs, which include “Fools Like Me,” “Window Shopping,” “Will You Wander,” and “Probably,” were written over the past couple years and reveal different stages of a pending split. Loeb characterizes them as personal, but not too personal. “I always hated it when writers wore their heart on their sleeve,” she says. “Sometimes when people write songs it’s painfully honest to the point where it’s not cool artistically — just annoyingly painfully honest. I didn’t want to make a record like that, but I definitely tried to open up my own experience into my songs.
“The theme of the entire record is seeing life the way it is and being able to take action based on that,” she continues. “Whether you’re seeing that you’re in love with somebody and wanting to move forward or seeing that the situation isn’t right and wanting to move away.”
Loeb initially dubbed the album “Half and Half,” because of the “jacuzzi to the pool” sonic shifts. “There’s everything from quiet folky songs, like Nick Drake, to something like ‘Diamonds,’ which is very influenced by Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Manic Depression,’ but it probably doesn’t sound that way because it was me,” says Loeb, laughing. “But the guitar was heavier. And then there’s songs that are more bizarre production-wise like ‘Window Shopping,’ where it goes between something like alternative Eighties music to something like Tom Waits falling out of a closet.”
Loeb also just released Catch the Moon, a children’s record that found her reuniting with Elizabeth Mitchell — the two performed as the folk duo Liz and Lisa while students at Brown University. The pair updated children standards such as “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “La Manitas.” “I just had a new niece born so kid’s music was in the air and it seemed like a good thing to do,” says Loeb. “Like everybody else, I’m always looking for kids music that’s not really annoying.”
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