Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Corrina Repp shares her evocative new single and video, “One Summer,” from her new album Island, out November 12 via Jealous Butcher Records.
The track soars and swoons as mellifluous strums and atmospherics rise, cultivating an indelible warmth that builds into and towards a feeling bigger than the titular summer, Corrina’s sure vocals passionately pining for the feeling of love. Repp expands, “There’s a melancholy I’ve always felt in the fleeting summer. A warm and subtle passing of long days and everything they held. Reminiscing about childhood freedoms, and a long lost love who passed away years later and the captured memory of an Indian summer.”
Island is Corrina’s first self-written and self-recorded album, produced in a tiny apartment on a hill in Echo Park during a time of isolation at the start of the pandemic. Resonant and resolute, the album is suffused with peaceful energy, touching on universal themes while existing as a document of Corrina’s inner life during that time. Hyper-focused due to these limits, Repp drew on her natural strengths of voice and guitar, resulting in music even more markedly intimate than her previous work. Island spans everything from haunting folk to exploratory guitar to cinematic pop, with Corrina’s voice and instrument taking turns sharing center stage. In Corrina’s sparse yet emotive way, her album calmly presents a score for our everyday lives that is as elegant as it is frank in both form and substance.
What’s your story as an artist?
I started singing when I was young, but was never convinced I had a voice. It took years and words of encouragement from those around me to realize I could sing. I still hid behind a style of talk singing for many years afraid to emote at the risk of being a girly girl singer. It wasn’t until I met my old bandmate in 2005 that I started to realize the range I had, and that I had been denying myself my own ability. It’s still taken many years of perseverance and fortitude to rid myself of my hang ups to continue to freely and confidently become an artist. To call myself a musician. Finding my creative place within myself with years and years of dedication, despite the difficulty, is one of the best things I could have ever done for myself.
What do you want your music to communicate?
I want my music to communicate honesty and truth. I want it to help people find a place of perfect melancholy, hope and peace.
What are some sources of inspiration for your storytelling?
Songs come from places I am not aware of. They show up, and sometimes for reasons I can’t explain. I close my eyes and I see a picture and start telling a story. A story of an emotion I am feeling. Any and all. They come from observing humanity and the world. They come out of loneliness and isolation. They come from a true love of nature and creating a soundtrack for what inspires me.
Who is an artist that you look up to more than others today?
All of my beautiful women friends who are making their art, and doing their thing in whatever shape that makes. Music, filmmaking, gardening, raising children, writing, designing, drawing, flower arranging. I have so much love and admiration for them, and they inspire me so.
What’s the record or artist that made you realize you wanted to be an artist?
I went to high school in Indiana, and had a boyfriend who went to art school a few hours south of where I lived. He was really the first person I met who was kind of wild, and who was absolutely driven to live his life, and to make music and art. He has since passed on, and sadly many years ago, but he is a huge reason why I felt like I could be an artist because I saw the passion he had and how he honored it. I had never really met anyone like him, and caught a glimpse of what being an artist was. It wasn’t until I got to college where I was really encouraged by those around me to pursue music. This was where I stepped on stage to sing for the first time. I had never felt like that before, and continue to be humbled by the process of performing and creating.
Tell us about your latest release and how it came about
It’s called Island, and it was written and recorded from April through August of 2020 by myself in my very tiny apartment in Echo Park. I was suddenly furloughed from my day job, and despite having an entire albums worth of songs to record (and still need to record), I went full speed ahead writing a new album, and feeling a wave of creativity like I had never felt before. Song after song came pouring out of me, and even though I had never recorded myself before, and had very limited instrumentation I made the most with what I had. Living alone really allowed me no other options other than to dig right in. Even though it was a challenging time on so many levels, I am grateful to have had the time to completely focus on making and writing music.
What inspires your sound?
I can’t say that anything in particular inspires my sound. I try to be purely informed and moved by the music I listen to, but not in a way that feels derivative. I get the nod, or an homage, but I want to make something unique, and that feels like me.
What’s your favorite tune of yours?
We Were Once on an Island is one of my favorite songs on the album.
Where are some things you really want to accomplish as an artist?
To keep making art and not be completely destitute.
Favorite lyric you ever wrote?
There are a lot of little moments lyrically where words find their way to me without any explanation or reason why. They just show up, and I write them down and sing them.
Release Me from my 2015 Pattern of Electricity is still one of my favorite songs.
“Take the thorn out now. Sing a lullaby. Let the lion lay down. Your pulse is a song. I’m in a force with all my might. I’m gonna rise up before I die. I’m rising.”
Was there ever a moment when you felt like giving up?
Always.
What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
I have wonderful people in my life, but I’m still waiting for the “best”.
Where do you think the next game changer will be in the music industry and entertainment scene?
I have no idea. I just want to keep making shit.
