Brain Pain: Lorren's Journey of Self-Discovery, Vulnerability, and Unapologetic Artistry

It’s been a busy few years for multi-instrumentalist Lorren Chiodo. After touring the world with Harry Styles and UMI, Chiodo has been busy working away at her solo-project Brain Pain which was released earlier this year. Unraveled Edit had the opportunity to have a Q&A with Chiodo in the middle of her busy schedule, here’s what she had to say…

Congratulations on the release of Brain Pain! How does it feel to finally have this project out in the world?

Surreal. SO surreal. I worked on this EP for what felt like FOREVER, and there were many times where I thought it wouldn’t be finished, or make it out into the world. But we’re here, and it’s crazy! A weight has been lifted and I’m very very excited.

The EP dives a lot into the various thoughts and experiences you’ve experienced over time, can you tell me more about these?

Brain Pain™ was created as sort of an experiment - to prove to myself that I could create something in the confines of my own room, with the tools I had, that would be truly and authentically mine. A project with no external influence or voice steering me down a particular path, no expectations and no rules - just what I felt it should sound like at the time. The songs came so fluidly, I think because I hadn’t set rules for them. I just wrote down and produced what I heard in that moment, and it slowly grew into its own living, breathing thing. Once I reached the point where I felt I had given all I could, Justin came in and we took it that one step further. I can confidently say that this EP fully encompasses everything I was feeling at the time I wrote it, and I’m so grateful I have it as a time capsule I can always come back to.

I wrote the majority of this EP while on the road with Harry Styles' Love On Tour, mostly between the North America and Europe tour legs. It was a time of intense change, incredible highs and some really low lows. Overall, the songs are about being unapologetically authentic, no matter how messy or chaotic it feels. It’s about learning to trust myself again, leaning into my vulnerabilities, and opening myself up to the good and bad and all that it brings.

Over the last few years, you have toured with some incredible acts including Harry Styles and UMI. What has this been like?

I absolutely LOVE being on tour. It’s a little odd, you basically step out of your life and into a completely different reality with new people, and it becomes your whole world. I love being on stage, I feel it’s one of the only places I can truly communicate my spirit. Also performing at arenas and stadiums around the world has been incredible. It has connected me with so many wonderful people and experiences! 

On these tours, you worked with so many incredible multi-instrumentalists and artists, assuming they all had very different backgrounds and influences, how did they help you evolve as a solo-artist? What influence did they have on you?

I’m fortunate enough to say that I’m surrounded by many incredible human beings, each with their own unique creativity and artistry, and I find great inspiration from the friends I’ve made on these tours. The Love on Tour fam influenced Brain Pain™ especially, as I wrote it during that time. I was coming to terms with a lot of personal truths, finding confidence in myself and my artistic abilities again, and realising I had people around me who wanted to see me succeed and thrive allowed Brain Pain to be what it is today. Looking back, they were significant encouragement for this EP’s release.

There is a clear combination of synth and orchestra sounds in your music, was this something you wanted to have in the production all along?

Yes! Definitely! I have such love for orchestration and arrangement and I’ve always incorporated some element of that in my writing over the years. I also produce and compose for film/television, and majored in film scoring at Berklee so I wanted that part of my musical DNA to be represented in the EP as well. Generally speaking, a lot of my musical inspiration comes from the half dozen CDs that were on constant rotation in my dad’s car growing up, which helped develop my love for absolute pop bops, synth heavy scores, and complex compositional works that take you on a mental ride. While working on this EP I realised I didn’t have to separate the two. I could find a sweet spot and the combination, no matter how it turned out, would be a true representation of my artistry and sound.

Were there any particular artists/albums or tracks that you were listening to at the time of creating this body of work?

Honestly, no haha. Which in hindsight is how the EP became such a unique and cathartic project I think. For a while, I was going through a period where I wasn’t really listening to a lot of music, or creatively expressing myself. But after we finished the North American tour I felt myself wanting to play for myself again, to get my ideas out, and just create. And that’s how the EP came to be. I think having that degree of separation from other musical influences for a while is what allowed these songs to be very pure, and a musically honest representation of myself.

‘Brain Pain’ is such a powerful introduction into the EP, can you tell me about the backstory of this song?

Okay yes, so Brain Pain is the song that sparked the EP concept. I had just got back from the North American tour, and was in my studio wanting to write and get some emotions out. Over the pandemic and leading up to Love on Tour, I was in a place where I felt I was relying on external sources to help validate my work, my music, my overall happiness really. It didn’t click for me until I was physically removed from my environment by being on tour. So coming back, I had this swell of gratitude that I was actively starting to trust myself and my abilities again, but also a frustration that it had taken so long to get to that point. And that’s what Brain Pain is about - recognising that I am more than capable of creating what I want to create, and that what I believe and feel is good, is enough.

‘Green Juice’ has this lyric “risking it all on a feeling, now I know what to believe in” - can you tell me more about this?

So this track is definitely the most ethereal and mystical, in that, when I sing or listen to it I am immediately taken inward. The whole song is a feeling of being exponentially abundant, aligned - divine really. I wanted the lyrics to match the music and production - very spacey, atmospheric, almost spiritual - in a cosmic, universe, stars, manifesting things kind of way. 

I think the lyric means that sometimes we need to simply give in to ourselves, and what we don’t know. 

‘Pattern of an Island Girl’ is quite an emotional song, can you tell me about this one? There’s a lot of themes in finding comfort in making the same mistakes and moving across the world alone.

This is my saddest one for sure haha. I wrote this one a year before the others, and really quickly -  it all came spewing out in one sitting. I think I was just feeling stuck, and fed up with the negative loop I was in. I was keeping company with people that didn’t make me feel good, and wasn’t really sure how to get out of it. This song really put all those complex feelings in a neatly wrapped up package for me. Moving countries is hard, and weird, and rewarding all at once. 

‘Palm Reader’ is such a fun and sexy song, it’s got a fun mix of pop with a bit of RnB in there - did you have any artists that you drew inspiration from?

There wasn’t anyone in particular for this one, just my general inspirations. This song all started from the processed sax line in the hook. I had just got the app to control my Eventide H9 pedal and was messing around with it, and made this weird patch. I can’t even remember what I did haha but I did save it thank god. Anyway, I used it on this sax line I made up and immediately knew I had something. 

In the beginning of ‘Home’ there is someone talking about the importance of connection, can you share who this is and what they were discussing with you?

Omg I’m so glad you asked this! The person speaking is my mentor, and incredible trumpet player, Tiger Okoshi. I studied with him during my time at Berklee College of Music, and owe a great deal of my artistic development and growth to his guidance. While we were doing the Madison Square Garden residency in New York for Love On Tour, I made a trip up to Boston to visit him. We had coffee, chatted about life, music, artistry - as we always do - and we got to a point where he was asking about my own music, if I’d been writing, etc. At that point the EP hadn’t begun yet, but I was starting to feel that internal need, that pull, to write again. I played him some music I’d worked on over the last year or so - mainly instrumental compositions and small sound design things, nothing of real significance I was planning on sharing - and he said something to me that I’ve had stuck in my brain ever since. He said he wanted to hear the sensitive part of Lorren, the part that would make people cry, that would make an audience weep. He said that making people dance and sing along with joy is easy, but that devastating an audience is what’s most difficult, and most needed. He wanted that from me, and he saw it in me, like he’d seen me throughout my time at school even when I couldn’t. Luckily, I was recording the conversation (we would record all my lessons during college so it was just muscle memory to have my voice memos going), and so his words made their way into the EP. Home was originally an interlude that I made purely to feature that voice note, but it later grew into a full song. 

‘Home’ is such a beautiful ode to spending time with those you love, finding a new-found comfort in yourself, looking after yourself and having a more positive outlook on life. Did you find that the dramatic and sudden change into touring had something to do with this?

Oh for sure. I don’t think it was the touring itself, but more so the way it completely shifted my perspective and reality. I was around people who saw my light and joy, and encouraged it. I was performing at incredible venues each night, genuinely having the time of my life, fulfilled. I found I was comfortable enough to be vulnerable with my friends, and lead to greater connection and support. It made me more present, more appreciative, and I started finding fulfillment from even the smallest of moments. It sounds sooo cheesy but it’s true! That song is just like one big exhale, a warm cup of tea, basking in a patch of sunlight.

If you could describe brain pain in three words to someone who has never listened to the EP before, what would that be?

Edgy, vulnerable and a bop.

Brain Pain is available NOW on all streaming platforms. Give it a listen, you won’t regret it!