How would you really feel if someone tried to seduce your partner right in front of you? And what if they actually succeeded? Laila, the new single from Los Angeles duo Belle and Chain, made up of Spencer Grammer and Davis IL, dives headfirst into that whirlwind of jealousy, guilt, desire, anger and resignation that can overwhelm you when a relationship begins to fall apart.
The song doesn’t try to escape that chaos. It stays right in the middle of it.
Spencer sings with deceptive delicacy. Her voice is full of nuance, yet there’s a certain distance to her delivery, almost a coldness, that makes the jealousy all the more unsettling. She is part folk storyteller, part cabaret singer and part Western heroine, trying to keep her composure while everything inside her burns.
“It was written about a specific experience with a woman who came and tried to steal the attention of someone I was seeing. Laila is a painful song about love lost, unseen truths between people, and ultimately what we learn from it all.” — Spencer Grammer
The instrumentation is marvellous. Starting with a bare guitar and an almost confessional intimacy, the song gradually expands into something nocturnal, dusty and ghostly: Americana noir with a cinematic edge. There are echoes of Neko Case’s dramatic intensity and the blend of femininity and menace found in Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang.” Towards the end, the guitars take on the feel of a Western soundtrack, as if all that pent-up rage were finally breaking loose.
Laila doesn’t prettify ugly feelings. It puts them out in the open. Jealousy, guilt, hatred, fascination, even the urge to become a little more like the person who is hurting you.
Belle and Chain don’t try to resolve that conflict. They simply show it for what it is. Sometimes going through all that darkness won’t give you any answers, but it might remind you who you were before you lost yourself in it.
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