Mushroom Pinecone
The flow on effect of my housemate Toby bringing home the biggest mushroom I've ever seen
Hello legends! I have had a lovely time these last few months. One of the highlights was travelling to Iceland and playing a few shows and meeting many incredibly warm lovely people. Some of these lovely people have joined us here – yay welcome!
Performing in Iceland was the first time performing in trio form with two of my favourite humans and musicians - Sara Flindt and Stikki Roder. It’s been fun finding the fluidity in these Stockerz EP tunes with different set ups and musical vibes and sharing it with these two has been a dream. Here’s me and Sara freezing our butts off post-gig in Borðeyri after playing at Hátíðni festival (feat a 1am sunset!).
In other news, today is the release day of one of my EP tunes - a tune dear to my heart called Mushroom Pinecone.
A couple of months into living in this kooky share house on a beautiful island in Stockholm, my housemate Toby brought home this enormous puffball mushroom. No joke it was literally the size of a soccer ball. I had never seen such a thing. We had this hilarious moment tapping on the mushroom along to Big Thief in the kitchen. Within no time Ita was playing along with a pinecone. It was all very silly and light hearted.
The next day, perhaps in an attempt to lighten up my creative process, I recorded myself tapping on the mushroom (which by this time had shrunk in size due to Toby eating some of it for dinner the night before). A Fred Hersch chord progression I had been playing around with morphed into the arpeggiated piano pattern, nestled between the mushroom taps. Before too long the song emerged (with some good old Gabriel Kahane inspired harmonic transposition edits late in the game).
You’ll be happy to know Toby is still acquiring puffball mushrooms….
For me, Mushroom Pinecone has become a mirror of the ups and downs of my own creative process – the ‘wtf am I doing’ stage and the ‘wow I’m tapping on a mushroom and kinda vibin’ stage. It’s warm and hopeful and rooted in the acoustic landscape of my last album Friends of the Future, but with a songwriter lyric-focused bent. This was the first tune I wrote after arriving in Stockholm, and marks a shift in my attitude towards how music is ‘meant’ to be done - it kinda allowed me to break out of old patterns and try out some new ways of making music. After recording yourself tapping on a mushroom you really just can’t take yourself that seriously. Lol.
You can listen to Mushroom Pinecone below! Or stream here.
The song grew with the wonderful additions of my beautiful friends living all over the world: Josh Barber on drum kit (recorded by Josh in Mollongghip), Lewis Coleman on bass (recorded by Lew in Preston), Nick Roder on guitar (recorded by Nick in Stockerz) and Max Dowling on saxophone and saxophone samples (recorded by me in London town). Yours truly on piano, voices, shakers, mushrooms and pinecones.
Thanks mum aka Elizabeth Newman for the artwork, Stikki aka Nick Roder for mixing, and Max for mastering. Special mention to Toby for supplying the mushroom and pinecones.
It’s nice to get this stuff out into the universe! I always love hearing your responses, associations and feelings (you can always just click reply to this email). It is always nice to know it has landed in the ears of people living real lives on this planet of ours.
Looking forward to sharing the full Stockerz EP (plus some upcoming gigs in various world locations!) v soon!
Lena x