To press play on Levina’s second album, Invincible Summer, is to simultaneously bear witness to an essential journey towards healing, connection and self-discovery, and to accept the extended hand of a friend.
**What did the major-label system ask you to compromise and can we hear you undoing that compromise on *Invincible Summer*?**
While I was making Invincible Summer, I really focused on enjoying the process and creating slowly with intention. Having creative freedom and room to play, and letting songs come to life in the way that worked best for them was really important to me. My experience with a major label felt pretty much the opposite. Everything happened very fast, with a lot of pressure and little creative freedom to explore or shape the sonic world of the music. So in that sense, I think you can hear me undoing some of that compromise on the album by giving myself the time and space to follow where the songs wanted to go. I am grateful though to have had what felt like an intensive crash course in the music industry, because it later allowed me to reflect on the things I didn’t want to repeat, the things I didn’t want to compromise on, and what was genuinely important to me as an artist, like the process itself, creative freedom and speaking my truth.
**You spent a decade working out what kind of artist you wanted to be. What took you so long to trust your own instincts?**
From my experience in the music industry, I’ve often felt there is an expectation, especially for women, that we are supposed to have it all figured out by a certain age. And there are definitely many amazing artists who have. But I’m not sure that ten years is really that long in the grand scheme of life. We are all humans, with varying amounts of baggage and different experiences, trying to find our place in the world. I think it’s important for anyone who is still figuring things out to know that everyone moves at their own pace, because all our journeys are so unique. I watched an interview recently with a 102-year-old woman named Dot, and when she was asked to share her most important piece of life advice, she said ‘Go slowly’. I feel like that is something more of us could benefit from in this fast-paced, goal-driven society. Looking back at my own journey, I now understand how certain childhood experiences had crushed my self-worth and self-trust, and made me feel like I couldn’t be fully myself. I spent a long time focusing on pleasing other people, trying to fit in, adapting to other people’s expectations of me and treading very carefully not to upset anyone along the way. When you only listen to those other voices, it becomes harder and harder to hear your own. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t trusting my own instincts, I had unlearned how to listen to them, until they were basically shouting at me through the deterioration of my mental and physical health. The music I was making was, of course, a reflection of what I was going through in my personal life. Apparently, I needed that time to untangle all of this. It’s an ongoing process that I’ve learnt so much from, reconnecting with my inner voice and uncovering who was beneath all the noise, first as a human being, and subsequently as an artist.
**Birdsong, beach-found percussion and minimal digital correction give the album an intentionally human texture. Where does imperfection become expression rather than error?**
Life is imperfect. Nature is imperfect. And so are we. And that’s the beauty of it. Although I guess it depends on what we mean by perfection. Maybe all the winding roads, the ups and downs and the messiness of life are exactly what make the whole thing complete. At least for me, striving for a certain idea of perfection has been so detrimental to my mental health, and letting go of that has actually been life changing. Music is such a deep human expression and I wanted to give space to the fragile and vulnerable side of our humanity. I feel fragility is often what makes something precious. The birds in my garden have been such a meaningful presence in my life, and having their birdsong on the record also felt like a way of connecting the music to the world around me. That really aligned with Steven bringing stones from the beach into the studio that became percussion on the album. I loved the idea of taking these raw sounds and textures that already exist in nature and allowing them to become part of the music. For me, imperfection becomes expression when it carries feeling and tells you something about the person, place or moment behind it. This album was very much part of my journey of letting go of perfection, embracing fragility and reconnecting with the world around me, so it felt right for the production to reflect that too.
**Does the title *Invincible Summer* describe resilience—or the pressure to appear resilient when you are not?**
I guess this depends on who is listening and where they are in their life. The album contains both, but my hope is that it can encourage people to let go of the pressure and reconnect to themselves, so that they can connect to each other and the world around them with a new perspective.
**When working with Steven Bamidele and such instinctive musicians, how did you retain creative control without controlling the life out of the music?**
Maybe control isn’t actually quite the right word here. I’d say creative freedom and the ability to experiment and explore together were the most important to me. I wrote the songs on piano and vocals, and for some of them I had a very clear vision of the instrumentation, which I shared with Steven. For others I was open to seeing where the songs wanted to go, and letting Steven take them on a bit of a journey. It was the same for bass and drums. We had the general grooves and bass lines before we went into the studio, but we also encouraged both Romarna and Rosetta to play around with the songs and improvise. I think the creative direction came from knowing the emotional core of each song, rather than needing to control every detail.
The reason these people were involved in this album was that I love their artistry and their playing, so it was important to me to capture their unique sound too. They are all incredibly talented and I’m super grateful they shared their talents with me on this record.
**Is making an analogue, musician-led album in an increasingly automated industry an aesthetic choice, or a rejection of where music is heading?**
To be honest neither of those were reasons for me to make the album the way I did. For me it came from a real craving to create something handmade with live musicians, and to go back to the roots of how I fell in love with making music in the first place. That’s playing organic instruments, jamming in a room together and capturing moments. The music I love listening to the most is also often recorded with live instruments. I sometimes even prefer a live version of a song to the studio recording. So more than anything else, this album was a return to the way I love creating most. With the increase in AI-generated music, and the growing role of technology in our everyday lives, I do feel that my craving for something human and organic has become even stronger. And I think I’m seeing that pull in other artists too. AI-generated music will of course exist and become part of the musical landscape, but there is something different, something deeper, about humans playing music together in a room. It creates space for spontaneity, raw emotion and connection. It can be transformative for both the people making the music and the people listening to it. And I feel like it will keep pulling us in.