Luna Aura's Noisy Rebirth

Luna Aura had enough.


Right after a number of years tumbling around the pop-music machine in Los Angeles, the writer, singer, and performer place on Earth Angela Flores was willing to add some grit. "I walked into a session and was like, 'I'm going to write a song that I want to write today, and all of you guys, each person in the room, I don't care. I want to write something bratty,'" she tells MTV News. "And then it ended up coming out incredible."


That still-unreleased song, a "Nine Inch Nails-meets-Rage Against the Machine" buzz saw, sparked interest from more alternative-minded producers and put her on the path that led directly to Three Cheers for the American Beauty (styled in all caps, as well as every song title and also because the artist's performer name, her new EP, out Friday (October 2). You could hear its clattering DNA on "Honey," English Males and "Crash Dive," among the other noisy, ferocious tunes that populate the project.


Likewise inspired by the '90s alt-pop of Garbage and sonically descended from the blown-out brashness of Sleigh Bells, Three Cheers is a screeching motorcycle ride through expectations of gender and cultural norms In the United States. Its passion comes from producer JT Daly — best known for his work with Pvris and K. Flay — and from 28-year-old Aura herself, whose shaken her religious upbringing in pursuit of her own meaning. "Each song really mirrors a different societal pressure that gets put on young females in American culture and fighting against that," she says.


In an era whenever insular viral stars are signed directly from their bedrooms and molded into bankable performers, Aura stands out. She taught herself guitar growing up in a "weird desert dairy farm town" in Arizona and gigged in coffee shops as a teenager. She eventually moved to Los Angeles with a boyfriend, angling for a larger musical ecosystem, and she stuck it out even right after their split, though her stupefying experience via industry ringer — lending her voice to big, anodyne, electro-tinged empower-pop — nearly weakened her resolve. "I had been so used to walking into a session and being [told], 'We're going to create something that sounds like this Selena track,' or routinely chasing something that had already been done, and I didn't desire to do that anymore," she says. "I noticed myself chasing a lot of what other people wanted because I didn't know who I was."


Right now, Aura owns the edgier raucousness of her latest material as a testament to how far she's come. "[It's] reflective of that time in my life While I was like, you know what? Screw everything. I'm not doing what each person else wants me to do anymore. I'm going to do me." Below, she tells MTV News how she arrived there.


MTV News: you are a performer, and that's certainly something you haven't been able to do this year. Do you remember back to the opening time you were performing in front of a crowd? What that was like?


Luna Aura: I have so several memories of either playing in a coffee shop If I was a teenager, all of the way up to playing big festivals where I'm sharing the stage with people like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pink and all of those incredible people. I miss the hell out of it because I feel like a lot of my artistry comes out onstage. It's been certainly really trying and challenging for me to stay creative and reside in that mode of wanting to prepare music, knowing that I'm not going have the ability to take it onto a stage and really express it in a way that I want to.


Yet I've counteracted that with writing a lot more, and I've Been writing a lot more for sync, for television and film, and really just honing in on my chops there. I can visualize a difference. I feel so much more confident right now Once I walk into a studio with a new producer. I can sit down and I'm just like, I've got this. I think I've benefited in that way, yet I do certainly miss playing live shows so much.


MTV News: As a performer, you eventually came to the realization that it was time to do something different musically. Yet I imagine in that very long road, there were probably moments where you had to wrestle with that decision, where you knew that you were doing something that you wanted to do, however maybe not in the way that you wanted to do. Is that fair?


Aura: I'm 28 right now, so any time As soon as I came here, I was 21, also it was a very different industry at that time — the Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift [era]. It was a whole different world in music, versus today, where R&B and hip-hop are king now. Back then it was that Swedish pop-perfection music. Being so young and not knowing who I was, that was what I was chasing, to be like the next fad. However also I think I was put into a box as a young female, also. A young, attractive female that has a pretty voice — she can only really fit so several places. It didn't make sense While I would perform live because I would have these really animated, crazy, energetic live performances and the music just did not feel right.


I knew something was off If I realized that about myself. I just took a break for a long time and didn't really write anything. Just hung out in L.A. And was caught up in a bunch going out all of the time and hanging out with people that I probably shouldn't have been hanging out with, and I just got to a dark place. That was any time this music really began coming out of me because I think I had so much discomfort and thus much rage indoor of me that just needed to come out. I don't know what was. It seemed like one day I just wanted to just take control of my life because I felt like I was at the mercy of each person else around me.


MTV News: once you were growing up and first writing songs, were into the sort of noisier rock you're making now?


Aura: I was lucky enough to have parents that were super open minded about music and let me listen to pretty much anything. I was place on Earth in the early '90s, so I was listening to things like Nine Inch Nails with Rage Against the Machine and Garbage and Hole and all that stuff. I've habitually had an affinity for rock music. The opening musical group I began was a metal band. I had somehow lost my way earlier into my early twenties, yet I came back to it again.


I've had a lot of influences. I listened to a lot of R&B, hip-hop, that sort of stuff growing up as well. I think you could hear that in some of my other side assignments that I do, that I write specifically for sync, nevertheless I have a lot of different influences. However for sure: I loved [Garbage's] Shirley Manson and I had an enormous crush on Courtney Love for the longest time, I don't know why. I should have known at that point in my life that there was something going on.


MTV News: The EP's called Three Cheers for the American Beauty, plus a lot of the imagery is centered around pageantry, nevertheless it's tinged with some menace. Could you talk a little about the concept beyond that?


Aura: At the time that I was writing this EP, I was settling into my own voice and realizing who I was, yet I also was ridding myself all of those past conditions that had been put on me from growing up fairly religious, and just my identity as a women, and what that meant, and what that intended for where I belonged in our society even, in American culture. Each girl that you visualize in the pageant setting symbolizes a character that embodies that story, and then there really are actual short stories that are attached to every one of the songs that will eventually come out to prepare it more of an extensive experience for fans so that they feel like they can be a piece of it, and even write some of the stories for some of the girls.


MTV News: Given the year 2020 has been, what have you been doing attempt to stay positive?


Aura: I have been staying really busy writing. A lot of people in the music industry have been doing Zoom sessions right now, which is certainly an interesting way to write music with people. There's ways for someone to connect their audio on their computer with yours, so you're hearing the song at the same time, nevertheless then as soon as you're writing to it and singing melodies, it's a little bit awkward, however you do what you need to do in these times. Even for artists now — there's no playing shows, and artists don't make some cash off of music anymore. They make all of their cash off of touring and merch. It's been really challenging for each person to keep their heads above water. You could visualize it with venues closing, and we just have no idea what it's going to look like next year once everything begins beginning back up again. Nevertheless it's certainly a good time to just keep your head low and be as creative as you could while this is all happening.