Lou Salome orbits around the act of yearning: romance with shades of sincerity. Adopting their name from the renowned psychoanalyst Lou Salome, the NYC based duo toy with the idea of what the “best rock band would look like.” In their pursuit, the image Leah Hennessey and Jack Kilmer constructed is one of teenage wishes, youthful sweetness without angst.
On Tuesday night, I sat down with Leah and Jack before their show at Nightclub 101 to talk about their upcoming album Just Something You Cared About in High School. Echoing the dynamics within their music, the two bleed into each other. There is no end or beginning, no start or stop. Lou Salome’s voice is singular, and it will only grow louder.
Can you introduce yourself for ALT Citizen readers?
Leah: I’m Leah Hennessy. I’m a singer-songwriter and half of Lou Salome.
Jack: My name is Jack Kilmer, and I’m a member of the band Lou Salome.
How did you meet?
Jack: Officially, Leah and I met at an acting class, but we also met online.
Leah: Jack and I were fans of each other before we were making music together. I was obsessed with Jack’s solo EP and listened to it on repeat. Our mutual friend Ruby McCollister introduced us, she’s always been procuring guitar players for me. Ruby suggested I play with Jack, and Jack was living in LA at the time. I was like, why do I need a cute actor in LA playing guitar for me? Then, I heard Jack’s music and I wanted to eat it and to take it and have it inside of me. Long story short, we ended up working on a show with Ruby. We played in her band in a theatrical show called Hollywood Soldier. I think the songs we played in Hollywood soldier had a huge influence on us starting this band.
Jack: 100%. The concept of a theater band was the nucleus of our band, and it still is.
So, there’s an element of performance to Lou Salome?
Jack: It’s all a performance. Performance allows us to be free and be ourselves. We start out in this theatrical way, and then end up with everyone saying, “You guys are the most serious band.”
Leah: I think that we had to feel comfortable being completely meta and theatrical to find our way into being painfully cringe and sincere.
Has your background in film and acting shaped the way you approach music? Are the two disparate or related?
Jack: I’ll just speak for myself here. I love acting, I love being in movies, but in acting, you are doing someone else’s thing. With music, you get to find your voice and what you want to say. For me, it was big to have a creative product that was just my own.
Leah: For me, I’ve always been into the fakeness of bands. I’ve always loved bands in movies, I love fictional bands, I love cartoon bands, I love bands that disbanded before they ever recorded anything, and bands that just exist in photos. So, I think that there’s a pretend feeling about Lou Salome, which is, what would the best band in the world be for us? What is it like to be in the best band? The Beatles are like, “the best band,” and they also are a band that exists in a fictional sphere. I do see Lou Salome as a band that makes albums, movies and experiences.
Before this interview, I looked up who Lou Salome is, the mother of psychoanalysis. Why did you name your project after her?
Leah: Our original idea was that we wanted to have a name that could be either of our names. It’s part of this pursuit of the total merging of our psyches and blurring the boundaries between ourselves and our work. There was a sense that I could be Lou Salome, and you could be Lou Salome. I’ve always wanted to name something Lou Salome and Lou Salome is the perfect name for this project because she’s a serious, heavy hitting academic. She’s the first woman to write psychoanalytically about female sexuality and was taken seriously among the academic community. But, Salome also lived a life committed to romance and fantasy. As Nietzsche’s muse, she’s often described in terms of her lovers. But, Lou Salome’s work is so major that she doesn’t run the risk of being reduced to anyone’s muse, yet she also gets to enjoy the glamor of that level of love.
You’ve released “Your Eyes Immaculate” a dream poppy single, ahead of your debut album “Just Something You Cared About in High School.” What did the writing process look like for this song?
Jack: I was playing around with moving to New York at the end of last year. On a night where I felt pressure to go out, I decided to just sit down, play some guitar, and wrote the Your Eyes Immaculate demo quickly. It all came out really fast. At first, I wanted to keep it as a song for my solo project. But, that was the night I decided to start to officially commit to this band with Leah. By doing that, I was gonna stay in and finish that song. Leah ended up stopping by that night and laying down the bridge vocal. After that, I went back to LA for a couple months, and my neighbor Derek Ted, who has a studio, helped me layer everything over the demo. The entire demo is still in the song, which is the only time I’ve ever done that. So listen out for, like, the weird, like, haunted, haunted shit, I’m beatboxing in it and stuff.
Jack, how was your creative process changed working with Leah in comparison to your solo project?
Jack: It was tough at first to let somebody else in so intimately to my writing process. But, the more I started doing it, the more I became addicted to it, especially with Leah. Leah’s delicate with vulnerable demos or lyrics, and also harsh and discerning about things. I think that’s a great combination. I basically produced this whole album alongside Leah, and the thing I really wanted to highlight with this question is that I tried to do as little as possible with capturing Leah’s performances and use every take. If there was a take that was really passionate, we’d do everything to keep it.
Leah: The core of the band is that we love to write songs and share them with each other in their rawest form. My dream was always to become a good songwriter and I never realized how many songs it would take to become a good songwriter. I already thought I was pretty prolific before I met Jack. When we started writing songs together, the level of output grew exponentially. Working together, the main thing that’s changed for me is to have someone who you know is going to listen to your song.
Jack: Every single song on the album is a demo we sent to each other over text. The whole experience of playing shows and putting this album out is a rebellion against my former process, in order to grow as an artist. Before, I was doing everything at home. I’d put a song out, and maybe would get a lot of listens, but I didn’t feel connected to a community. For me, Lou Salome is much harder than what I was doing. But, we’re here tonight. I’m meeting you. We’re doing things that are contrary to what most people do now, which is to be at home and go online.
In Faith, you weave in a rendition of the Buzzcocks “Why Can’t I Touch It” almost to a Jane Says-esque bass line, what inspired you to bring your own take to these classic songs?
Leah: I’ve always been pretty free about sampling. I have a postmodern approach to writing and using cultural artifacts as colors or textures.
Jack: She’s also a master of making it her own.
Leah: Faith was originally called Frankenstein Faith and the song is about listening to George Michael’s Faith. It’s about a time when I was going to a lot of parties, and I was coming home and listening to Faith every night as the sun was coming up and dancing by myself. I felt the whole time that something was about to change and something was about to happen. If I kept listening to Faith, my life would change. I was listening to Faith all the time, and then I met Jack, and we started writing songs. So, it did happen. Everything I was waiting for happened. The dream came true. With the samples, I don’t want anyone to think that I wrote those words. It’s obviously an homage to the gospel that is the Buzzcocks. I feel like I can express personal nuance through quotation.
Jack: Leah also runs this songwriting group, and we sample a lot of stuff in there and get subconscious with the lyrics in that class. I think Leah is also not giving herself credit, she’s really on to something. Every emerging hyperpop artist is sampling everything under the sun and using it in a really creative way. I love sample based music. And, I think, let it all in, mix it all up.
How are you feeling ahead of the release of “Just Something You Cared About in High School”?
Leah: Even though we have such a grandiose self image of this band, I think I never actually dreamed big enough. All I ever wanted was to hold the CD in my hand. When that happened, I glitched out, because I was like, now, what do we do now? The idea that the album’s going to be in the world is still shocking to me. But, it feels like it’s just the beginning. I love the aura around unreleased music and it being private. I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the album with people who are my heroes, and people who I love. Hopefully, now, someone who I don’t know can hear it.
Jack: For me, doing this whole album release has completely catapulted me into a fourth dimension of reality. I don’t know how a CD fits into the world, but I do know that it hits creatively. I feel like we won anyway, no matter if people hear it or not.
So, what’s one thing you cared about in high school?
Jack: Cigarettes and side parting my hair.
Leah: I feel like I haven’t changed that much. It’s boys, cookies, Nietzsche, David Bowie, and glitter.
Jack: That’s five things.
Leah: I haven’t evolved that much.
Jack: I’m still the same too. Hopefully, I’m a little smarter now.
Photos by Dariana Portes
Just Something You Cared About In High School is out on November 21st on Babe City Records. Presave the record here.