LAW comes to town

The enduring appeal of charity shops is that you can’t be sure what they will stock from one day to the next. To the unadventurous, such outlets conjure images of badly dated clothes and tatty paperbacks with yellowing pages, but others know them as places of rare treasure; first edition books, out-of-print vinyl and fabulous garments that no high street boutique can offer.

Lauren Holt is a regular visitor to Edinburgh’s numerous charity shops and second-hand clothing emporiums, from which she creates the various striking ensembles she adorns when performing on stage as LAW. “People presume I spend loads of money on my clothes, or that my manager has told me how to dress,” she explains to The Skinny in a bar a short distance from her studio on a quiet Sunday evening in Leith. 

“They think it’s more constructed than it actually is. It’s a performance; it’s an embellishment of who I am. Charity shops in Leith are great because they are cheap, and you get really mad stuff that no one else wants. People meet me after gigs and say: ‘You look really scary on stage, but you’re actually quite nice...’” She laughs at the thought. “I am actually a person; I have to hold down a job and a relationship.”

Charity shops have given Holt much more than a steady supply of original garments, however. It was while volunteering at a Salvation Army store that her music career was given a steer, leading to her current status as a beguiling new artist that no one can seem to define. On stage, she is an entrancing presence, seldom speaking between her spectral songs, almost all of which remain unreleased in any formal sense.

"You see people backstage who are in bits because they're scared and have been thrown into this because they can make money. I’m glad I was able to take my time” – LAW

Raised in Leicester, she moved to Edinburgh from Liverpool in 2010 and lent her vocals to a variety of groups in the capital – including a ska outfit, a blues ensemble and a covers band – but continued to search for a vehicle in which to explore her own songwriting. Enter fellow Sally Army volunteer Jacqui Cuff, who recommended Holt to Leith-based producer Tim London, manager of avant hip-hop trio Young Fathers. The gang quickly became firm friends and collaborators. “One day I gets a call from Tim, who I had only met once before very briefly, when he came in to look at records. Jacqui still doesn’t admit it today, but she must have given Tim my number. Where else would he get it?”

Just seven days later Holt was in London’s studio to record Hustle, the mesmerising lead single from her new EP Cowboys and Hustlers. Its warped pop hooks and tribal rhythms are impressive enough to capture even the most casual listener, but it’s Holt’s vocal which is the real stand-out. The slight quiver you detect can be attributed to her nerves at recording with people she had met just days before. “I was nervous, because it was my chance," she admits. "It was the first thing we had done."

Young Fathers introduced her to their improvisational approach to recording – “the power of having no fear,” is how the group have previously defined it – which they in turn had learned from London. It was a technique that Holt found invigorating. “You don’t want to over-think things, you don’t let hang-ups get to you and the little doubts creep in. You take more chances and take more risks. With Hustle, we just went to the studio, they played me the beat and we wrote and recorded it that night.”

It’s a method that would make certain perfectionist producers wince. “I think more people could do it if they wanted to, but it’s not a standard way of working, they think it’s weird,” she continues. “I had recorded before but it was always more traditional. The producer gets you doing all this silly stuff, all these takes, and you don’t need to. When I started working with Tim that’s why we hit it off so well. The way he worked fitted with what I wanted to do. That instantaneous way of working deserves a lot of credit. I mean you must have the ideas before you record, and maybe that’s why people don’t do it – because they don’t have the ideas.”

Hustle is only now being released, but the song and its accompanying video was first posted on YouTube as far back as March 2013, where it has accumulated almost 18,000 views. The video itself makes for compulsive viewing; a naked man lies comatose face-down on a cheap hotel room bed, the word ‘LAW’ carved in his back, while Holt, wearing a green wig, flicks through TV channels and sings in a voice that initially sounds fragile but quickly shows its steel. 

All concerned are confident it will find a new audience upon its official release. “Hustle seems to be the track that has touched people the most," Holt observes. "I’ve not held it back deliberately, but I did want to give some life to the song, and see it take on its own form.”

It’s clear that this is an artist who is confident in what she’s doing and intrigued to see where it will take her, with no intention of rushing it. While there my have been an element of chance in her meeting London and Young Fathers, Holt has spent considerable time learning her craft and earning stripes as a performer, singing jazz in Liverpool in small bars to often unappreciative audiences. She reserves the right to be selective about where she'll play and when it's appropriate to release new music.

“You don’t want to be doing too much nonsense,” she smiles. “I’ve done all that, I’ve played Whistle Binkies. They don’t even give you a free drink in there anymore – Carlsberg if you’re lucky. A lot of venues have no respect for music or for the musicians. In a small city like Edinburgh, if you’re gigging too much, people are not going to bother coming. But it gives you a good experience, mentally, if you’ve had to play places where they don’t appreciate you, and then you start getting a rider or something, or you’re playing your own material and not doing covers anymore. You can enjoy it more as you know you’ve worked for it. Sometimes I feel sorry for artists that are very young and are flung out there; they’re not given the time to develop. Their management will say ‘Oh she can do it, she can do it’. You do see people backstage who are in bits because they're scared and have just been thrown into this because they can make money. I’m glad I was able to take that time.”

Holt is no slouch, however. She has her first London headline show at the Servant Jazz Quarters on 9 June to look forward to and next month will visit Kirkcudbrightshire to play at the Wickerman festival. It’s a steady increase in pace from the handful of gigs she played in 2013, which were accompanied by growing interest from the music press and industry alike.

Having already worked with producers who have considerable pedigrees, she seems relaxed by it all. “When I was younger, I wouldn’t have wanted the attention as I was still trying to hone my voice and get it right, get the craft right. That’s why I was trying to sing jazz – just to better myself. I used to go to jazz open-mic nights in Liverpool where I met a piano player called Dave Fisher, who worked with Malcolm McLaren in his youth. He was the one that discovered Annabella from (early 1980s pop sensations) Bow Wow Wow in a laundrette. He was a great man, he really encouraged me. He gave me Billie Holiday CDs and said ‘Listen to this, this will change the way you think about singing.’”

Holt is non-committal on the subject of debut albums, but more songs are likely to emerge later in the year, in one form or another. For now, she plans to keep experimenting. “I see myself doing this for a while; doing different styles, different production. If things turn out our way, we can keep moving forward," she offers, cautiously optimistic. "I don’t want to make coffee any more!”