Born Lauren Isenberg, renforshort has captivated audiences with her distinctive sound and authentic, vulnerable storytelling. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter has now released her eagerly anticipated third EP, “clean hands dirty water”. This evocative project is filled with poignant coming-of-age experiences and intense emotional isolation, showcasing raw, bittersweet alt-pop ballads and dynamic, high-energy tracks. Each meticulously crafted song highlights renforshort’s honeyed vocals and richly layered arrangements, solidifying her status as a compelling and innovative rising star in the indie-pop/grunge scene.
We sat down with renforshort for an in-depth, track-by-track breakdown of the EP. She discusses drawing inspiration from the melancholic genius of Elliott Smith, imagining herself in the tumultuous life of Vincent Van Gogh for a track, and collaborating with a variety of exceptionally talented fellow creatives.
Listen to the album…
serpentine
“This song came after a long walk in London. I was going to the studio that day for a session with Johnny Lattimer, and I decided cause I had the time, I was just gonna walk the whole way. It was about an hour and a half walk, and it gave me the time to think about what I really wanted to talk about in a song and how I felt in that very moment. It felt super fitting once I got into the session, to just write a song about the solitude of being alone for a bit. I was listening to a lot of Elliott Smith, and the song “Somebody That I Used to Know” really inspired this song- not necessarily lyrically (though a bit) melodically. He does that little walk down on “Now that your old enough to run your own show, You’re just somebody that I used to know”. That moment in particular always stuck with me. I always felt the emotion and how in your face in an incredible way, he forces that lyric to be through the composition of that incredibly beautiful heart wrenching melody. And I found that to be a massive inspiration on this song.”
hurt like it should
“I wrote this song after getting out of a long term relationship that lasted my high school years. I realized I had spent so much time with this one person, that all the big moments like driving for the first time without an adult, or my first show- will always be remembered being with them. That, to me, was a scary thought I had never considered before that day. It also makes the bad things they did to you, almost jade those moments. Which sucks. So we wrote this song, because I think a lot of people share this feeling. It’s hard to put into words, so I had Ian Fitchuk and Tommy English help with that, and it ended up being a really honest, true song.”
buried alive
“I had been in the studio a bunch with Paul Phamous and Ethan Shneiderman, writing some amazing music. And, one day, Paul said he was gonna bring in a friend of his who’s an insanely talented writer. I did not realize just how talented PJ Harding was until we started writing ‘buried alive’. It felt like collectively, we built this super safe, fun space to create openly. We would spit out melodies and throw out words until we got a song that felt super special. When I received that first bounce, I was in the car with my mom and we both started bawling. Which felt like a good sign lol.”
getting over you
“I was really into this idea of writing a 70’s inspired bass forward, synth-y, piano-pop song. So, I spoke to Jeff hazing before that session and we went over some references and ideas and came into this session with Midi Jones who is exceptionally talented- and he perfectly captured what I wanted. We got to do a bunch of fun vocal production and experimented sounds I’d never used in my music. It felt like breath of fresh air to me.”
doesn’t matter at all
“I wanted to write a song that felt a little more light-hearted than some of the other songs on this project. It’s more mindless and cuter (I think…?) It’s about the thrill of the beginning stages of a crush/relationship. How you feel so much, and how you love the idea of being with this person. We wrote this song in a dark garage ironically and it was maybe 35 degrees Celsius so we were HOT. We wrote this pretty quickly, I honestly forgot about it for a bit, then came back to it and realized it’s such a cute emotional song that really feels like it has a place on this project.”
paris has made me a man
“I develop extreme interests around random shit. Some days, it’s the deep ocean, some days, its airplanes. But it most consistently is famous artists personal lives. So I took some inspiration from Van Gogh’s life and decided to put myself in his mind as best as I could for this session. To this day, this may be the fastest song I ever wrote. I felt such a connection to him in this moment, and it was a very emotional song to write for me. I think the content of the song rings true for so many people, and artists. When you have such a personal connection to what you create, you sometimes feel like people won’t be able to see it through your eyes, and how you’ve intended it to be perceived. I’m very lucky to have done this with the super talented producer Y2K, who I think really just understands what I wanna do and perfectly encapsulates it.”