Attawalpa (Luis Felber) has today released his second album ‘EXPERIENCE‘ via Attawalpa Records.
Today he also shares new single ‘True Love Trajectory‘, which serves as the perfect season finale closing track for ‘Too Much‘, the Netflix series that Luis has co-created and co-written alongside his soulmate in art and life, the writer and filmmaker Lena Dunham and available globally on 10th July.
HEAR NEW SINGLE ‘TRUE LOVE TRAJECTORY’
The video was directed by Lena Dunham, who explains: “I wanted to capture the joy and pleasure of marriage, good old-fashioned romance with a modern edge, contrasted against the hopeful confusion of waiting for someone you love (maybe someone you will soon love) to arrive. The song is nostalgic and warm, just like Super 8 film, and it was a joy to film so many pals, old and new, in the London we love best.’
WATCH VIDEO FOR ‘TRUE LOVE TRAJECTORY’
Having just played Glastonbury, Attawalpa has confirmed a London show in July, with more dates to be announced soon.
25 July – The Lexington, London – TICKETS
Attawalpa began life as a de facto solo project. “At first it was me and [producer/bassist/co-conspirator] Matt Allchin”, Felber recalls, but slowly it’s grown into this seven-piece family, in which everyone’s creative, and we all have each other’s backs”. That ‘family’ – drummer Henry Danowski, veteran percussionist Maurizio Ravalico (Jamiroquai), Viola player Freya Hicks, keyboardist/tubular bell player Adam Sopp, Cellist Haydn Winn and multi-instrumentalist Matt Jones, in addition to lynchpins Felber and Allchin – are responsible for the co-construction of ‘Experience’, an album whose vivid, hook-laden sonic vocabulary helps upgrade the shapeshifting baroque pop-rock and mooching groove template of Attawalpa’s debut longplayer, ‘Presence‘, which charmed critics back in the autumn of 2022. For Felber, having the luxury of a well-drilled, empathetic ensemble has been revelatory. “I’ve never been in a band where everything felt so positive”, he affirms. “We recorded it all live as soon as we felt we had the right palette for the song”.
LISTEN TO ‘EXPERIENCE’ HERE
BUY ‘EXPERIENCE’ ON BANDCAMP HERE
‘Experience‘, Felber admits, is a way of recognising the circuitous route his life has taken, for good and ill. “It’s about acknowledging all that lived experience, but it’s equally about the experience of playing with this band”. He describes his revitalised, refocused creative life as “quite dreamlike”, which is perhaps not surprising, given that the euphoric recording of his group’s sophomore album has been effectively synthesised with his role as co-creator, co-writer, executive music producer and score co-composer on the forthcoming Netflix series, Too Much. A collaboration with Dunham, boasting a stellar cast including Richard E. Grant, Emily Ratajkowski, Andrew Rannells, Rhea Perlman, Dean-Charles Chapman, Don Letts, Fontaine DC’s Carlos O’Connell and Stephen Fry, the series is autobiographical in the broadest sense, telling the story of a transatlantic love affair between a struggling London musician and a heartbroken New York career girl. “We shot the show over five months in the first half of 2024”, Felber reveals. “It was a wild ride”, he says, revealing that he was on set every day, while his songs, as delivered by [White Lotus/ A Real Pain actor] Will Sharpe as one of the show’s central characters, Felix, are crucial to the unfolding narrative. Having composed the score for Dunham’s 2022’s Sharp Stick (Filmnation) and composing recording and performing the soundtrack for Catherine Called Birdy (Amazon), Felber, abetted by Matt Allchin and his Attawalpa bandmates, also provided the wider soundtrack and score for Too Much. He acknowledges what for him has been the “art imitating life, imitating art” meta-real nature of his core involvement in the series, which is due to begin airing this summer. “Hearing Will (Sharpe) play my songs in the show is amazing – a kind of out-of-body experience. I felt like a mixture of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York and Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
While Attawalpa’s own version of the song True Love Trajectory will play over the season finale episode credits, Felber is keen to stress that the album should be appreciated as a standalone work. “In some ways, the show shaped the album but equally, the album shaped the show”, he clarifies. “I’m really proud of the record, and, of course, I want people to hear it. I’m blessed that we’re making a TV show that’s going to showcase some of the album’s songs, which millions of people are potentially going to be exposed to. It’s an amazing privilege. All that said, I’m always happy and anxious about sharing my work”.
He needs to have no such trepidation. Captured at Allchin’s south London Off Licence facility and Eastcote Studios in Notting Hill, the results are as rich in texture as they are in rhythm and melody. There is pop gold here – not least the contagiously dreamy (and first single from the album), ‘Always the Girls’, with its teasingly conspiratorial, semi-whispered vocal (“Give me the honey / I just want the honey”), slippering guitar figures and graceful viola and cello parts. Similarly addictive, ‘Alma’, a tribute of sorts to Felber’s so-named mother (“I’m a child / You’re a saint” goes the repeated refrain before the roles are reversed in the final pay-off), comes replete with an angular groove, staccato organ, shards of processed guitar and a glorious, reverb-laden chorus.
Elsewhere, the unshakably catchy ‘Hilarious in Love’, with its pattering bongos, psychedelic-era Beatles strings and “I’m dead” refrain, is a thing of credulous, loved-up charm. “I wrote that when I had Covid”, Felber reveals. “Lena was next door – she’s immune compromised and couldn’t visit– so I was in the bedroom, and she was on the other side of the wall…. I just felt really far away from her and very needy!” By contrast, ‘You Are You’ – all hovering, celestial violins and plangent guitars – actually began life as a pean to Dunham’s pet dog, an inscrutable pug/Mexican hairless cross called Ingrid who Felber fell in love with as he and Dunham connected (she is credited with “additional vibes” on the album), but subsequently blossomed into a thing of existential affirmation and universality (“It’s a song about humanity; where are you on this rock in space, this planet?”), while the piano-decorated ‘True Love Trajectory’ is aching pop poignancy incarnate, pitched, like one of Blur’s more mellifluous ballads, equidistant between euphoria and melancholy.
All of which, taken together, constitutes another great leap forward in Felber’s hearteningly personal and professional journey. “When you push for something, when you’re desperate for it, you never quite get it”, he says, reflecting on his younger, more frenziedly ambitious self. “I’ve learned that you have to suffer a little bit and wait. I’ve been becoming more patient since I got sober and met my wife – and the convoluted filmmaking process is all about being patient…”
“EXPERIENCE’ TRACKLISTING
01. Alma
02. Atoms
03. Everything
04. No Limitations
06. You Are You
07. Always The Girls
09. Anyway
10. Observe Or Absorb
WATCH ‘HILARIOUS IN LOVE’ VIDEO HERE
WATCH ‘ALWAYS THE GIRLS’ VIDEO HERE
WATCH ‘ANYWAY’ VIDEO HERE
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