Lauren O'Connell

“The power went out/I was alone/Everything died/It was suddenly cold/In a place where it shouldn’t be,” Lauren O’Connell sings on “Power Out,” the opening track to their fifth record, Everything Feels Ridiculous. It’s a stark sentiment, at odds with the shimmering backdrop of major chords behind it. But it’s an apt juxtaposition to open a record whose thesis is Everything feeling Ridiculous, an assertion that’s rooted in delight as much as it is acceptance for life’s absurdity. Rigorously and prolifically DIY in their approach, O’Connell has self-produced all of their preceding albums of original music, in addition to countless cover songs, all of which they’ve released independently to a loyal audience. Nothing about their process needed to change, except they did. In 2021, after going through their first breakup as an out queer person, O’Connell found that old patterns no longer fit. For the first time, they didn’t want to record and produce the songs they were writing alone and isolated. Produced by Alex Pfender (Yoya, Lucius) in Los Angeles, Everything Feels Ridiculous burbles with openness and play, the electricity of touching a lover for the first time. But the joy in these songs is earned—it’s the fruit of O’Connell’s sometimes painful growth over the past half-decade, first coming out as queer, and then, partway through recording, as genderqueer. It’s a celebration of all that they’ve been, and all they’ve become, finally unrestricted by the constraints of history.