The Alt-country and cow-punk rocker says her latest album, Real, is a love letter to the realization that her existence is just as valid as anyone elses.
Her latest studio album, from 2016, is Real. Her label is Bloodshot Records. For her 2011 album Indestructible Machine, she wrote a song called Steve Earle (which is not about him, but a stalker). Lydia Loveless isn't in it for the backstage deli platter – do you understand?
Explaining the theme of her fourth studio effort, the American alt-country artist and cow-punk rocker gets, well, real. "I feel like I spent my formative years flopping around like a fish," she said in a news release upon the album's release, "masking pain with substance abuse and somewhat ashamed of who I was: A hayseed, a phony, I felt. It was absolutely necessary for me to become a stronger, more confident human, or I was going to die. Real is my sort of love letter to that realization, that my existence was just as valid as any other."
And so the fearless Ohioan calls out the romantic clumsiness of a certain demographic on Midwestern Guys and sneers at a lover on More Than Ever. Imagine a brassier Loretta Lynn in a Pearl Jam T-shirt. Tough here and tender there, Loveless does truth. Deal with it.
Lydia Loveless plays solo, Nov. 11, 8 p.m. $17.50 to $22. Rivoli, 334 Queen St. W., ticketfly.com.
Brad Wheeler