Lava La Rue's debut album heralds a superstar in the making: "It's like going through puberty but publicly"

From Lavaland to the cosmos: Lava La Rue’s ‘STARFACE’ is a bold, genre-defying statement of artistic intent. Check out the latest cover story for our New Music Friday playlist edit, PLAY.

Words: Martyn Young.
Photos: Blackksocks.

Lavaland has always been a wondrous place. Full of creativity and dynamism for almost ten years now, it has been the sonic playground for Lava La Rue to establish themself as one of our most illuminating pop minds. Now, though, Lavaland has a visitor: meet STARFACE and be prepared to be transported to a new celestial plane. 

After so long confounding expectations and resolutely following their creative vision, Lava La Rue’s debut album would never be just another project. It had to be a statement. ‘STARFACE’ is the culmination of an odyssey through sound and expression. “It’s like going through puberty but publicly,” begins Lava as they explain the first decade of their musical career. “I knew I wanted to be creative since I was young, so I started putting myself out when I was 16. Sometimes, I envy artists who waited until they were in their early to mid-twenties and really figured out who they were and were able to put out this fresh brand. Everyone has grown up with Lava La Rue, as I have since I was a teenager. Y’know, putting stuff on SoundCloud and dropping mixtapes. It has taken me until my mid-twenties to say I’m an adult now, and I know myself a bit better.”

Knowing themself fully is what allowed Lava to develop the concept of who STARFACE is and how they could tell their story through the sci-fi dreamscape of a 17-track album. “The whole concept and the inception of ‘STARFACE’ started almost three years ago,” explains Lava. “All my life, I’ve been leading up to wanting to put out an album. It feels more serious. If I’m connecting to a narrative, this is what I am.” 

Part of the album’s story was informed by Lava’s love of fantasy and books detailing strange worlds and the people who inhabit them, like Phillip Pullman’s acclaimed 1995 book Northern Lights (also known as The Golden Compass, depending on where you are in the world). “The whole concept is young people shape-shifting,” Lava says, explaining the book’s story. “That has been me for a while especially with genre identity and musical identity,” they continue. “I embody a lot of different things because I come from an area that’s really mixed in different ethnicities and classes. I also feel that I embody that as well in being a mix of heritages and gender identities so I felt like that kind of weird shape shifting salt animal. Writing this album felt like settling into a place, and I wanted a conceptual narrative to embody that.”