Multi-instrumentalist Luna Li discusses how she approaches her unique style and how she embodied it during her sophomore album When A Thought Grows Wings.
Indie pop artist Luna Li recently sat down with Off Record Blog to discuss her sophomore album When a Thought Grows Wings. She is currently headlining her tour of the same name across North America and will open for NIKI across Europe.
ORB: What part of a song do you usually start with? In terms of lyrics, melody, and production?
Luna Li (LL): For this record, it started with the music and the production for sure. It was a more collaborative process than I’ve ever done before. I had two main collaborators for this record, and with each of them we would get in the studio and just make a bunch of instrumentals together. And then I would take those instrumentals home and write the lyrics and melodies afterwards.
ORB: When you write instrumentals, you usually know: okay, I’m writing this on harp. That’s going to end up on harp. Or do you change what instrument the melody is going to be played on?
LL: I think usually I have the instrument in mind when I’m writing a melody. Very rarely does it change. Sometimes I’ll have in the arrangement another instrument adopt a melody that the voice was doing or the guitar was doing, which I find fun- to sort of pass things off like that. But for the most part it kind of sticks to the original vision in terms of the instrumentation when we’re writing in this way.
ORB: Do you ever have an idea and you’re like: I need to learn a new instrument to do this?
LL: Kind of, yeah! I mean, even just sometimes I have an idea that I can’t actually execute and I just practice it a million times before I’m able to play it.
ORB: What’s your approach to like learning new instruments in general?
LL: I think I just need to be excited about it. After I started learning the harp, which was maybe almost seven years ago, I didn’t really have a taste for like, I need to learn something new because I felt happy with where I was. And then this year, I had just the most incredible woodwinds player come play on the record and he played the flute on the record. After hearing him play, I was felt so inspired to try learning it myself. And so it’s just the excitement that really carries me through the first learning portion of the instrument, because it can be a really uphill battle at first. Especially with woodwinds because it was my first woodwind and it’s very different than any instrument I played before. So I kind of just feel excited about it. Playing every day and being okay with sounding really terrible.
ORB: What was your approach and how was it different between your sophomore album and your debut album?
LL: For the debut I wrote all the songs and demoed them out before I took them to the studio. And so I sort of had an idea of how I wanted them to sound. And the writing process was a much more solo type of process. And then this record (When a Thought Grows Wings) was much more collaborative. As I said before, it was the writing of the instrumentals was collaborative. And then I took the instrumentals home to write the lyrics to afterwards, and then finish the production in the studio. So I just don’t want to do the same thing twice or at least twice in a row, because I find that if I switch it up and push myself a little bit, I end up with a better result.
ORB: How much are you thinking about when you’re making the album: the album as a whole versus just working on one song at a time?
LL: I think I do approach it song to song, because I’m not, you know, when I set out to make this record, I was thinking: I have the end goal of it being a record, but I didn’t have a specific vision going into it. It was sort of more exploratory, finding what sound I wanted to pursue for this. And so it was definitely a song to song. And I made a bunch of songs, and not all of them ended up on the record, but we sort of honed it in and collected the group of songs that made the most sense, and then it came together from there.
ORB: So slightly different question. Your Luna Li persona versus yourself: how much are you separating that? How much is that conscious and intentional that you’re separating those two?
LL: So when I first came up with the name Luna Li, I think there’s a lot more conscious separation between the artist persona and me as an individual. And then I think what sort of changed that was when I started working on “jams” and recording those in my bedroom. You know, a bedroom is an intimate place. It felt a lot more personal than anything I’d shown on the internet orto the public before and the lines kind of got blurred from there. And I’m always writing about personal stuff and things I’m going through. And so the lines blurred more and more. But I still like to sort of use the Luna Li persona as someone to sort of step into on stage and it’s just nice to have a little bit of separation. Helps me get out of my shyness and feel more confident when performing. And it’s also just nice to have a sense of privacy as well.
ORB: Do you want to talk about the visuals of the album and the music videos?
LL: When I was writing this album, I was reading this novel called The Overstory by Richard Powers, and he’s just absolutely an amazing writer and I was really inspired by his writing while making this record. Basically the novel is following all these different characters, but the throughline is that they all end up kind of being involved in protecting the forest, protecting old growth. So it’s kind of a book about activism and protecting nature. I was inspired by some of the really poetic passages that he wrote just about the magic of trees. And I started using the theme of the oak tree in my songs as a symbol of stability and comfort, and that crops up a few times across the record. And then it ties in with the album visual, with the axe, because this record was really about growth and new beginnings for me. So the axe symbolizes chopping down the old comfort and stability, making room for new growth.
ORB: That’s really interesting, I didn’t realize that. I’ll definitely be thinking about that next time I listen through. That’s all the questions I had prepared. Is there anything else people should know?
LL: Okay. So I can say I’m on tour right now. So whatever tour dates we have left when this article comes out. We just love to see people come to the shows. A few of them are already sold out, which is really exciting. And we’re just starting out right now. We’re on our second show today, so I’m definitely looking forward to it.
You can listen to Luna Li’s latest project When A Thought Grows Wings on all music platforms.
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(NOTE: ALL OF OFF RECORD BLOG INTERVIEWS ARE MINIMALLY EDITED FOR LENGTH)
I am an Austin, TX based filmmaker and photographer. I moved from Houston to attend the University of Texas at Austin, where I graduated in 2022. I'm a lifelong music lover and spend most of my weekends attending shows. Some recent favorites are K. Flay, Devon Again, and Farmer's Wife. Other than that, I enjoy reading, writing, playing volleyball, yoga, and gaming.
