For those unaware, Spencer LaJoye (luh-JOY) is an East Coast singer/songwriter from the Midwest making queer indie folk music for everyone. The 2021 Kerrville Songwriting Competition winner spins crystalline vocals through a loop pedal while strumming an acoustic guitar in charming, banter-heavy performances that keep audiences laughing one moment and weeping the next.

LaJoye is also a classically-trained violinist with a proclivity for Broadway vocals, and a student of Americana music with a theology degree hanging in their studio. They’ve been writing and touring their own autobiographical folk/pop music for over a decade, but the virality of their 2021 anthem “Plowshare Prayer” secured them a permanent place in hearts and households across the world, as well as a peculiar career as a veracious songsmith with an unshakeable pastoral presence.

Spencer has a lengthy catalog of recorded music documenting their journey from Christianity through disillusionment, the earliest EP of which won the 2014 WYCE Jammie Award for Listener’s Choice in Grand Rapids, MI. However, after coming out as gender nonbinary and finding peace as a post-Christian, Spencer changed their name and released Remember the Oxygen, a 4-song EP featuring the Denver String Machine with arrangements by China Kent.

After appearing as an official showcase artist at Folk Alliance International 2023, Spencer released Plant a Piano, a solo EP of vocally theatrical piano ballads about decay, change, and beauty. As LaJoye’s first effort following the highly-anticipated and mammoth studio recording of “Plowshare Prayer,” this stark piano EP was an invitation for eager listeners to get up close and personal with Spencer and the craft of one song by one voice.

On February 16th, 2024, Spencer released Shadow Puppets, their first full-length album under their new name. Childhood memories, family patterns, shame, and desire form a cast of colorful characters in this 12-track, indie-folk tale of a formerly closeted queer kid from Southwest Michigan. The album was produced by Chris DuPont in Ypsilanti, MI, and is a clever synth-guided and lyric-driven departure from some of LaJoye’s more universally anthemic offerings.

1. Shadow Puppets (4:23)
2. Chaotic Neutral (4:54)
3. The Art of Feeling Lonely (4:16)
4. Good Man (4:37)
5. How Are You (4:44)
6. Reverie (3:07)
7. Convents (3:39)
8. The Joker (3:52)
9. Serial (4:45)
10. Surgery (3:53)
11. Someday You’ll Wake Up Okay (4:19)
12. Forgiveness (2:24)

This sensitively impassioned, honed and yet dynamically embroidered new recording opens on the sweet rhythmical hipsway of the titular Shadow Puppets and then we get brought forth the slightly sterner cathartic fare of Chaotic Neutral, the smooth gossamer of The Art of Feeling Lonely, and then come the peppy Good Man and the laid back, low slung How Are You.

Along next is the gently jaunty Reverie [you hold a gaze like a grudge] and the languishing duet Convents and they are in turn backed sweetly by the personally-imbued storytelling within The Joker, the veritably shimmering Serial, the album rounding out on the heart on the sleeve, revealing Surgery, the free flowing Someday You’ll Wake Up Okay, closing on the fibrous, melodically floating yearn that drives Forgiveness.

Official Purchase Link

www.spencerlajoye.com