Lauran Hibberd launches her debut album

Lauran Hibberd hails from the Isle of Wight, and loves the island’s slow pace of living, and her music – charged with deliciously quick wit – draws on its many idiosyncrasies. She views her hometown with a protective fondness: case in point, her hometown’s unofficial national anthem. “It’s the worst song I’ve ever heard,” she laughs. “They play it on all the ferries. I’ll be there on the midnight ferry with shit cup of tea, watching Derek Sandy sing ‘Welcome to the Isle of Wight’. I think: this is England”.

As a teenager, she listened to Galaxy FM and developed a love of pop music, but initially set out playing folk, catching the attention of Bestival founder Rob Da Bank who helped out early on by booking her and she ended up opening Bestival’s main stage aged just eighteen after winning a competition. Soon after that, she headed into the studio to record her early work, and that’s where everything changed. A producer handed her an overdrive pedal, and a copy of Weezer’s ‘The Blue Album’. “That was me converted,” she says. “I remember I got that CD stuck in my car for a year of my life”.

Developing a style all of her own, Hibberd’s more recent material has a brutal honesty to it. For example Old Nudes tells of someone peering out a car window, and staring at a person they once trusted with their most intimate thoughts. But now they’ve become a stranger – it’s strange and jarring. Lauran says that “the song’s about old nudes, but beneath that, it’s about a lot of other things, too: realising that somebody knows everything about you. I want to be open about it, and talk about it. If I can release a song called Old Nudes and play it to my grandad, it makes it easier for everyone else. It’s a confession for myself, and it’s also about trying to normalise it”.

Pondering what kind of artist she wants to be, Lauran Hibberd has a typically succinct, and slightly strange, answer at the ready that somehow manages to tie everything neatly together. “I like to think of myself as One Direction for children that want to pretend they’re alternative,” she says. “I want teenage girls to come to my shows and bring their dads: who will stand at the back like ‘oh god, can’t wait for this to be over’ and the girls at the front. And then I want the dad to be like, oh actually this is quite good. “The dad and daughter combo,” she grins. “That’s the golden spot”

We recently promo’d Lauran’s latest single That Was a Joke. We loved it and I was really looking forward to receiving early access to her debut album, and I’ve subsequently had “Garageband Superstar” on repeat for a few days now.

The album opens with energy galore in the form of grungy Rollercoaster. It uses great humour looking at the ups and downs of music and aiming to be someone ‘like you’. The track has a light sugar-coated feel to it, but a gritty heart beating underneath, and it reminded me overall of something from the legendary No Doubt. There was a brief guitar moment in the middle, which was so reminiscent of something like Wolf Alice. Loved it.

Still Running has a different vibe to it. For me, it had overtones in its structure of great old school indy bands such as The Primitives, but with a new 21st century vibe and style to it. A song about the grind of life’s treadmill and the expectations of others, and a desire to be free to be yourself.

Step Mom has a delightful quirky feel to it, with powerful guitars and a pounding drum track holding it all together real tight. I loved Average Joe and Hot Boys, which follow one another on the track list - both have a funny take on the world and use very different styles to express themselves, that work so brilliantly with their subject matter. Average Joe has a raw, noisy feel to it, whereas Hot Boys is more pop-punk with a real Paramore/Avril kind of feel to it.

The next track is the excellent single That Was a Joke. Lauran says that the track lives in a world of denial. “I feel like it could be a soundtrack to an early noughties kids show but the references are too niche for the average Zoey 101 watcher. It felt like a good track to leak, because I can always lean on the title to save my butt if no one likes it”.

The title track Garageband Superstar and finds Hibberd reflecting on the downside of stardom “it’s only a matter of time before I lose my mind…. I’m a superstar now”. The lyrics are exceptional here, expressing the highs and lows so effectively and questioning why we would pursue fame, and conveying a desire to run away from it all.

Hole in the Head is a delightful change of pace with an anthemic drive to it, and a much heavier grunge feel to it, with fuzzy guitars dominating. The following track I'm Insecure returns us to pop-punk stylings delivering some of the best lyrics on the album "I’m insecure, I want to go home, I've got a bad case of Imposter Syndrome," something many of us will resonate with.

I loved the moment of vulnerability at the start of Slimming Down as it starts and two words in Lauran says “Nah I’m gonna go again” and starts the track again. A beautiful slow track, full of emotional vulnerability. Again the lyrics are amongst the best and so expressive. Perhaps my favourite line on the album “I fell onto your trampoline and I never quite bounced back”. So expressive.

The final track on the album is Last Song Ever, and is my favourite, painting a picture of someone right on the edge, unable to cope anymore "I need to calm the hell down, I need to chill the fuck out". The track builds brilliantly to an almost calm plateau, as she describes the plans she can make to break free from the panic attack. But the track starts to break down around her, as the plans unfold and she decends into the previous illogical and irrational actions from before. It creates a great sense of being trapped in your own thoughts, and demonstrates her lyrical prowess brilliantly.

Initially, you could find this to be simple another pop-punk offering, but the more you listen, the more the comic elements, the great story telling, and the outstanding use of lyrics come to the fore and you see the full depth in the tracks. It’s a debut album, and of course, there is room for Lauran to develop this style and her skills more, but it’s a great album and shows the direction she’s travelling on….. up and up !

Loved it, a great album and one I’ll be returning to for more and more. An 8.5 from LiveWire Music !

Lauran is making a series of record store appearances to coincide with the album launch, before heading out on tour in September. Full list of dates are below:

Record Store shows

19/08/22 Rough Trade – East London

20/08/22 Rough Trade - Bristol

21/08/22 Vinilo - Bournemouth

21/08/22 Vinilo - Southampton

22/08/22 Rough Trade - Nottingham

23/08/22 Resident - Brighton

23/08/22 Pie and Vinyl - Southsea

24/08/22 Banquet - Kingston

25/08/22 HMV - Manchester

Full tour

17/09/2022 - Arts Club (Loft), Liverpool