When Laurel Canyon-based artist Lawrence Rothman started making their emotional album The Book of Law, they were in denial, burrowing themselves deep in a confused corner of their psyche in the midst of recovering from a mental breakdown. Having addressed their gender fluidity and dealt with their fair share of ignorance in response, the resulting record is a deeply personal journey to self-discovery that powers relentlessly onward through Lawrence’s nine physical and emotional alters, as depicted in the accompanying videos by director Floria Sigismondi.
Out now on Downtown/Interscope, the synth-soaked record is peppered with features from Lawrence’s favourite artists (now friends) including Angel Olsen and Marissa Nadler, whose own music was a beacon of light for them when depression wouldn’t budge. Isn’t it perfect when things come full circle? Wanting in on the life-saving soundtrack Lawrence references in an album-accompanying statement, we asked them to share the the mixtape. It will probably make you cry but they’ll likely be happy tears.
“This playlist is the music I was listening to throughout the recording of my album The Book of Law,” Lawrence explains. “It helped raise me up from feeling super low, during an intensely complicated time in my life. These songs gave me confidence to put my blinders on and show the world the true ‘me’. In order to be free as an artist and human, I wish to exist as a person without the confines of ‘normal’ gender binary. I dress and exist how I wish. My body is just a vessel for my inner being.”
So here’s to freedom and the songs that help us feel it, even when the rest of the world seems to tell us otherwise.