(/Tiohtià:ke’s) Le Ren AKA: Lauren Spear, is the artist behind Le Ren, releases her new album Leftovers on October 15th via Royal Mountain Records/Secretly Canadian. “When I think of leftovers, I think of things that have been cast aside,” she says. “When they’re picked back up or remembered, they can be repurposed… Leftovers came to mean a collection of feelings and moments of the past that still remain relevant to my present.” Ahead of the release, Le Ren has shared the album track “I Already Love you.”

Leftovers was originally scheduled to be recorded in LA in early 2020, but the pandemic forced Le Ren to reconsider the kind of album she wanted to make, and how she wanted to make it. Taking the time to revamp old songs and bring the past to bear upon new ones, she distilled years of material into ten tightly executed tracks united by the swooning pluck of her guitar and the crystal clear timbre of her voice. In April 2021, she met with producer Chris Cohen in a rented house in Portland, Oregon, where they had to wait for a neighborhood boy to stop making noise outside before they could record. The album came together much like the patchwork of her quilt, with collaborators Kori Miyanishi, Cedric Noel, Saltwater Hank (Jeremy Pahl), Eliza Niemi, Kaïa Kater, Aaron Goldstein, Buck Meek, and Tenci (Jess Showman) recording their parts separately from across North America.

Spear studied bluegrass as a teenager on Bowen Island/Nex̱wlélex̱m, a small municipality on the Canadian west coast. In adulthood she dove headfirst into Montreal’s (/Tiohtià:ke’s) music scene, expanding her artistry into contemporary folk, rock, and country. With the release of her EP Morning & Melancholia in 2020, Le Ren earned comparison to the deft musicianship and sparse, eloquent lyrics of John Prine and Neil Young.

Pre-order Leftovers by Le Ren HERE