About this Event
Gabby’s World is the music and lyrical world-building project of Gabrielle Smith. Smith began making music in 2007, constructing songs and ambient soundscapes out of experimental aural building blocks. Over the years, Smith’s songwriting has matured, focusing in on her interest in folk melodic and lyrical traditions while also developing a keen pop sensibility. The resulting music, showcased in albums like 2015’s O.K., carefully treads the dynamic lines between expansiveness and intimacy, with a sound defined by emotional urgency and upbeat pop danceability. Lyrically, Smith’s songs are baroque, drawing from themes more in line with the romantic poets than with contemporary pop songwriters. Smith’s newest musical pseudonym Gabby’s World emerges after an extended hiatus and hibernation period in which Smith reevaluated many of her values and ideas about art.
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Sarah Katherine Lawless grew up in a musical family in the Virginia suburbs, raised on a balance of ballet lessons, burnt CD-roms of The Dave Matthew’s Band, America, and the off-key melodies of her grandmothers upright piano. Her dad, a LimeWire devotee with an array of albums to play during trips in the family Volvo, transformed long drives into life lessons. Music quickly became her escape. She remembers writing her first song at nine, which she taped on her cassette pocket recorder. As she got older and furthered her songwriting skills throughout high school, she took to SoundCloud. Stealing away to record demos on GarageBand. She took some inspiration from the movie “Begin Again” and made a pop-filter out of a hanger and panty hose (haha)! The seeds of what became her debut EP only began in summer 2021. After finishing her junior semester at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, she stayed put in the city. She would watch videos of Julia Jacklin and Sidney Gish between shifts, awe-struck by the interplay between their storytelling and guitar playing. She had so much that she still couldn’t express through the piano, and realized she needed to start writing on the guitar to get it all out. Lawless ended up teaching herself the guitar through the trial and error of composing her own songs. Without any preconceived notions of how others played, she was free to create her own unique, unconventional voicings. Falling head over heels into the intricate warmth and authenticity of the modern indie-folk movement, then set out to record what would become her debut EP, “Look What I’m Learning!.”
Event venue & nearby stays
Dada, 6047 Myrtle Avenue, Queens, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.