Lennon Stella – Sleeping Lion
Lennon Stella has announced her second studio album Sleeping Lion, due out October 23 via RECORDS.
Sleeping Lion marks Stella’s first record release in six years. Her new single and video “Unforgivable Things,” out this Thursday, is the first offering from the record.
Sleeping Lion is Lennon Stella’s second album, but it feels like an introduction. The title’s image of dormant strength aptly summarizes the journey that the 27-year-old indie folk singer-songwriter has been on for six years.
After her 2020 full-length Three. Two. One, Stella needed to take a second to get to know herself and reconnect with her love of music. Sleeping Lion is the result of this moment of quiet, which sees Stella returning with a renewed sense of creative freedom and trust in her own instincts.
She shares, “I waited long enough that people within the industry stopped caring, and the pressure went away,” Stella says. “With that came freedom, inspiration, and excitement; My true love of music returned.”
The album took shape through a deeply personal process, including scrapping an earlier version of the record, and a serendipitous collaboration with lauded Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf, who serves as the producer of the album and helped Lennon reconnect with the raw, earnest music that first inspired her.
The songs on Sleeping Lion revolve around the intricacies of relationships, and Stella is an acute observer. On this collection of tracks, Stella challenged herself to write with as much honesty as possible. She recalls how her longtime co-writer, Simon Wilcox, encouraged her to write without a filter and worry later about reactions from the song’s subjects.
“It was always a push for me to write freely, to put aside the part of myself that wants to make sure that everyone’s going to be okay, and that’s afraid of hurting people,” Stella says.
Upcoming single “Unforgivable Things” – to be released alongside the official music video this Thursday, August 27 – will capture the essence of the album; an awakening as Stella explores her own insecurities with empathy and curiosity. The video was co-directed by Stella and her collaborator Adam Alonzo.
“This song is about when someone starts sabotaging a relationship in weird ways instead of just saying they want out of it,” Stella says. “Sonically, it ended up guiding the project in a really special way and acted as a door for me. So it felt appropriate having it be the first thing people hear from the record, acting as a door for others as well. Welcome in!”
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