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When Lauryl Sulfate & Her Ladies of Leisure first danced onto the scene with their brand of “feel-good, disco-fueled love letters,” it was an exuberant experience to watch the band grow and stretch into notoriety in the Milwaukee music community.
They just started to hit bigger stages like Burnhearts’ Mitten Fest when 2020 crept in to reroute their path. Fortunately, that detour took the band (now called “The LOL”) only further in the direction of growth.
Re-formed as a duo, bandmates and co-writers Lauryl Sulfate and Mark Zbikowski wrote their upcoming sophomore record, The Afterparty, at their separate homes, bouncing tracks back and forth while meeting over FaceTime. Then they sent them to friends Patrick Boland and Jeff Patlingrao at Honeytone in Neenah, Wisc., for polishing and mixing.
The band has since left bread crumbs leading us to the album’s spring 2023 arrival. Singles “Laguna” and “6 Feet Under the Dance Floor” (shared in 2021) spelled out a new direction — deeper and darker — that still played to The LOL’s penchant for everything dance floor, but in a more grown-up way.
The LOL’s newest single, “Running” slides onto that dance floor a little like Scissor Sisters’ classic “Take Your Mama” but gets even more sultry and Madonna-esque as the tension builds. Sulfate’s manipulated vocals on the verses still retain enough grit to feel the raw emotion underneath, and when the chorus kicks in — “I hope you got what you were gunnin’ for” — it’s clear she’s singing with a sting.
The song gets its official release on all streaming platforms this Friday, Oct. 21, as well as on Bandcamp. Listen to it here and then catch The LOL at Cactus Club on Nov. 12 for an all-ages show that also includes Vacancy Chain and Photo-Curio.
