Press Play: Laura Gibson

“I thought we were goners.” A phrase of escape, of narrowly avoiding doom, of scraping by on the skin of your teeth.  At its core, the awe that you survived, but the memory of danger.  Laura Gibson takes this word, Goners, and uses it to relate past and present for her newest album.

Gibson has called Oregon home all her life.  She was born in Coquille, attended university in McMinnville, then later settled in Portland.  In her youth, Gibson played cello and basketball.  One of the turning points for her happened when she was only fourteen; her father passed away.

She recently graduated with an MFA in writing, heard in her rich use of language.  The lyrics are dreamy and often figurative.  Though she writes fable-like songs, there is an honesty and sincerity hidden in the stories of the album.

With Goners, Gibson explores grief and the way it tends to color one’s world.  How everything– relationships, milestones, sense of self–is washed in the weight of it.  In the title-track, Gibson opens, “If we’re already goners, why wait any longer for something to crack open?”

Though fatalistic, there’s a sense of liberation in the song, in a coming-to-terms sort of way.  The loss of a parent writes grief into the narrative of her album and how that has shaped her views of parenthood, and ultimately, womanhood.  In “Domestication”, she writes a wolf-woman treading the line between hushed-conformity and strong-willed wildness.  Other songs in the album run with the wolf imagery.

Take down cults with the video for “Domestication”.

Check out more from Laura Gibson and artists like her by keeping tuned in to RSURadio.com!