Following a year which has seen the release of tracks such as “late night”, “bad luck”, and “left u on read”, Sydney’s Loretta are back with one of their most personal tracks to date, sharing “when i saw u” ahead of its release this Thursday.
Already acclaimed for their delicate marriage of alt-pop and immersive songwriting, Loretta have continued to grow with each and every one of their releases, with “when i saw u” once again building upon their past work, and showing them diving deeper into themes of acceptance and self-realisation.
“‘when i saw u’ is a chapter on acceptance and forgetting what made you feel so lost in the past,” explains Ellis Hall. “It’s basically about how there’s no substitute for physically being in the same room with somebody – the moment when all of the fights and misinterpreted texts fall away at the sight of the person you love.”
With recent lockdowns hampering the creative processes for most artists, Loretta managed to overcome adversity to craft the stunning single. Recording the track at keyboardist and guitarist Nico Scali’s house, before Nicolas Mendoza and Jamie ‘Chunkyluv’ Muscat took on mixing and mastering duties, respectively, the demo version quickly gave rise to the special qualities that are present on the final product.
“The process of making the song was really meaningful,” Hall explains. “Max and Nico put together a demo that captured a vibe I was really relating to at the time. I had a melody pretty much immediately and sent it back and that was it. It came together really fast and felt like it really meant something.”
With the song officially released this week, Loretta have also paired with a Chris Lanzon-directed film clip, which sees a skeleton crew of close friends helping the band shoot the clip in New South Wales’ Artarmon. The result was one the group found themselves very proud of, with the energy of the shoot replicating the carefree nature of the track itself.
“We wanted to really capture the feeling of music with this video,” the group explain. “We got together with Chris [Lanzon] and came up with the idea for the video pretty quickly, drawing themes from the song and some external references to help capture something really meaningful.
“The process was also really enjoyable, had a bunch of our friends there, the energy was really high and once we had everyone’s roles and parts down, we got it all done in a few takes.”
Loretta’ “when i saw u” is officially released on Thursday, October 21st.
