Biography
Lauren Spear, known under the moniker Le Ren, draws from Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan, and Karen Dalton while matching her warm, articulate singing voice and reflective melodies to textured acoustic accompaniment. Her gentle indie folk songs first appeared as a full-length collection on the Chris Cohen-produced Leftovers in 2021.
Spear studied bluegrass during her teenage years on Bowen Island/Nexwlélexm along Canada’s west coast, then broadened her focus to contemporary folk, country, and rock once she settled into Montreal’s music scene as an adult. A few early songs surfaced online in the mid-2010s. Intended sessions for her debut album in Los Angeles during 2020 fell through, leading her instead to rent a house in Portland, Oregon in April 2021, where Chris Cohen produced and performed on the tracks. The resulting sparse arrangements on her Le Ren debut, Leftovers, also incorporated contributions from Big Thief’s Buck Meek and Mauno’s Eliza Niemi, among others, before the album reached stores via Secretly Canadian that October.
Spear studied bluegrass during her teenage years on Bowen Island/Nexwlélexm along Canada’s west coast, then broadened her focus to contemporary folk, country, and rock once she settled into Montreal’s music scene as an adult. A few early songs surfaced online in the mid-2010s. Intended sessions for her debut album in Los Angeles during 2020 fell through, leading her instead to rent a house in Portland, Oregon in April 2021, where Chris Cohen produced and performed on the tracks. The resulting sparse arrangements on her Le Ren debut, Leftovers, also incorporated contributions from Big Thief’s Buck Meek and Mauno’s Eliza Niemi, among others, before the album reached stores via Secretly Canadian that October.
Albums
Singles
