Biography
Bright, precocious singer/songwriter Lauren Hoffman crammed an unusual density of lived experience into her first seventeen years before ever joining a band. Raised by a musical family on a rural Virginia farm and for a stretch inside an ashram, she spent her high-school years interning for the still-emerging Dave Matthews at his label and merchandising outfit, Bama Rags. There she encountered Shannon Worrell, whose independent album Bama Rags was then helping to distribute; Worrell urged Hoffman to perform with her, and Hoffman soon entered the group that later became September 67.
As the band turned increasingly professional, the already overloaded Hoffman stepped away. Her time with September 67 had nevertheless brought her into contact with the staff at Sound of Music, the Richmond, Virginia studio co-owned by Cracker’s David Lowery. She began tracking her debut EP, The Chemist Said It Would Be Alright But I’ve Never Been the Same (1997, Pitch-a-Tent Records), with Lowery, yet before that project wrapped she carried much of the material to a West Coast studio for reworking with producer Ethan Johns. The finished result was her first full-length album, Megiddo, issued in 1997. Critics greeted it warmly, and Virgin Records France invested heavily in its promotion, establishing Hoffman as a cult favorite in France. Stateside, however, the record struggled, in part because its release came on the heels of Fiona Apple’s Tidal, another collection fronted by a young, striking, emotionally turbulent post-teen.
The attendant pressures prompted Hoffman to pause recording, exit her label deal, and dismiss her management. She resurfaced in 1999 to cut From the Blue House for Free Union Records. Another extended interval passed before the atmospheric and luminous Choreography appeared in 2006, followed by Interplanetary Traveler in 2010. After a further stretch of quiet, Hoffman returned in 2015 with two fresh solo EPs under the rebranded name the Secret Storm; the full-length Family Ghost arrived in 2017.
As the band turned increasingly professional, the already overloaded Hoffman stepped away. Her time with September 67 had nevertheless brought her into contact with the staff at Sound of Music, the Richmond, Virginia studio co-owned by Cracker’s David Lowery. She began tracking her debut EP, The Chemist Said It Would Be Alright But I’ve Never Been the Same (1997, Pitch-a-Tent Records), with Lowery, yet before that project wrapped she carried much of the material to a West Coast studio for reworking with producer Ethan Johns. The finished result was her first full-length album, Megiddo, issued in 1997. Critics greeted it warmly, and Virgin Records France invested heavily in its promotion, establishing Hoffman as a cult favorite in France. Stateside, however, the record struggled, in part because its release came on the heels of Fiona Apple’s Tidal, another collection fronted by a young, striking, emotionally turbulent post-teen.
The attendant pressures prompted Hoffman to pause recording, exit her label deal, and dismiss her management. She resurfaced in 1999 to cut From the Blue House for Free Union Records. Another extended interval passed before the atmospheric and luminous Choreography appeared in 2006, followed by Interplanetary Traveler in 2010. After a further stretch of quiet, Hoffman returned in 2015 with two fresh solo EPs under the rebranded name the Secret Storm; the full-length Family Ghost arrived in 2017.
Albums
