Photo by Paulina Zepeda

Liana Warren is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based out of Oakland, California. Her work is marked by her intricate fingerstyle guitar, painterly lyricism, and her energetic yet introspective approach to emotion. I got the chance to interview Liana about her new single "Paulina," out today.

Grab a listen and read on.

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview!

Tell me about who performed on “Paulina” and the new album overall. How and where did you get together?

I had the total honor of playing with Marissa Deitz of Sucker Crush for this one! We met and became pals through the Free Key Choir, which is this really awesome DIY choir out of Oakland. We both sing soprano, and I heard her play cello on a couple of choir tracks. She’s so sick, I was like, “I have to get her on this album!!” And, Marissa hosts a songwriting group called Music Every Week, or MEW, and the whole thing is that you have to write a song each week, otherwise you get kicked out of the group. It’s good accountability!! But anyways, I wrote this song as a part of that group, so it felt like a cool full circle moment to have her on cello.

But this whole album is super stripped back, and I was very adamant about keeping it that way — at any given point, what you’re hearing is just me on guitar/vox/keys, or Geoff Saba on bass and synth (who recorded, mixed, and co-produced this whole thing), or Marissa on cello for a handful of songs. It was all recorded at Geoff’s home studio in Oakland, and we tracked things slowly over the span of a year starting in September 2023. It was fun! It was cool to have time to expand the songs and collaborate; I feel like Geoff was just such a blast to world-build with. We were looking at everything with a kind of holistic, sound design approach, and the album just would not be what it is without him!

Did anything magical or strange happen during the writing or recording process?

I will say, I’m a huge perfectionist, and it’s something that has always held me back with my art. I feel very precious about what I create. So for me, this album was a really big process of letting go, and learning to not just accept but to love the imperfections of it all. My whole mindset with this album was to lean into the accidents or things that happened unexpectedly. I was kind of thinking of it like a collaboration with the universe — I can only be in charge of so much that happens, and the rest of the stuff is the magic that makes it all real and human.

“Paulina” is one of my favorite examples of this on the album! Marissa had a stacked day the day we recorded this track, and she had forgotten her wolf tone eliminator — it’s this thing for the cello that helps damper some of the weird frequencies that come from playing certain notes. “Paulina” just happened to be in a really resonant key for the cello, and we were getting all sorts of overtones unintentionally. When I was listening back, there were these pockets of overtones in the recording that I just found myself so enchanted by. It was like this accidental touch of magic that made the whole song feel more otherworldly. So we came back into the studio and I asked Marissa to lean into the overtones. We came up with the overtone parts at the beginning and end of “Paulina”. It felt so wild, because it was a total accident, and now it’s 100% my favorite part of the song! To me, it sounds like organilleros, which are these portable, atonal crank organs that are played all through the parks in Mexico City. It was such an unintended thing that built this whole beautiful soundscape for the song.

Who or what would you say are the main influences behind the new single?

I wrote “Paulina” at a time when I was trying to process heartbreak. Most of my songs begin this way: I’m not really trying to write a song so much as I’m just trying to work through whatever emotion of the day is feeling too big or too overwhelming. “Paulina” was inspired by a short-lived but super emotional romance, someone I had done some traveling with. At the time I wrote it, it was pretty much just a diary entry of all the things we had experienced together when we were in Mexico City, but it morphed into a reckoning with bigger questions.

I’d been listening to a ton of Joni Mitchell at the time — I feel that’s pretty apparent in this song. I just love her highly specific, place-based lyrics. A lot of times it feels like she’s just describing what she’s seeing or experiencing around her, and it puts you in this very vivid, poetic world where the metaphors appear almost magically out of really mundane, normal things.

This song was also definitely inspired by Angel Olsen’s album “All Mirrors” (which is one of my all-time favorites). That whole album is so emotional; it’s such a journey. The strings are just incredible — I can really feel them in my chest. Plus, that album similarly reckons with moving through big heartbreak feelings in a way that doesn’t run from them, but creates a beautiful, sparkling world where they can be just as fulfilling as happier feelings.

If you had to pinpoint your favorite lyric in the song, which would it be and why?

It’s honestly changed for me a lot the more I sing and listen to the song! At first, my favorite lyric was “the cathedral leaves its doors open wide//we hurry in cuz it’s cool inside//and I’m not a pious man, but just this once I think I understand.” That lyric was the first lyric that made me think, “oh, this is going to be a special song.” But the more I’ve settled into the song, I think I’ve come around to “I get the feeling Jesus just closed his eyes//to savor the water like wine.” When I first wrote that, I thought it was pretty cheesy. I still think that, but I also think some of the best lyrics are incredibly cheesy. This lyric cuts through to what has become one of the largest messages of the song for me: that our perception shapes our reality. It’s about being open to the experiences that life gives you, to enjoy and savor the little things even if they don’t end up being what you expect. I’m trying to be more of an optimist these days; life is really hard and sometimes you gotta drink your water like it’s a big ol’ glass of wine.

Is there a particular ethos behind “Paulina”, and how does that fit into the overarching album concept?

The whole album, “For Now, Forever,” is a reflection on temporality. Everything is temporary and ever-changing, and it’s a lot of me grappling with this concept of “forever.” This album is a snapshot of who I am right now, and recording it has felt like we’ve been capturing this fleeting moment to live on forever, in a sense. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially with this being my first album. It’s like my first real footprint, and I already feel like a totally different person than I did when I started recording. Which is cool — it’s just proof that nothing ever stays the same!

“Paulina” is the big reckoning moment of the album, where all the questions about what forever even really means come to a head. It’s about embracing the present moment and allowing yourself to get swept up into big feelings, even if you know those feelings might one day change. And, in fact, they will change! Everything always changes, and the one thing we have forever is the moment that we’re currently existing and experiencing. And, in that moment, one thing we always have is the love for the people around us!

Do you have any notable gigs coming up? Where can we see you next?

Yes! This weekend on Saturday, April 12th, I will be playing a benefit show for Palestine at Standard Parts Studios in Oakland. It goes from 4pm to 10pm and it should be a blast — I’m sharing a bill with Emily Afton, Nuxia Peng, and Elizabeth Lubin. Plus, there will be a food pop up, and all the proceeds go to Project Hope Palestine.

On 4/20 at Ramsess Art Garden on Broadway in Oakland I’m thrilled to open up for a Sucker Crush EP release (Marissa’s project!!). Another early show at 3pm, but it’s going to be really special.

Further down the line, I want to shout out that an arrangement of an unreleased song on my new album is going to be performed by the 140+ voices of the Free Key Choir in mid-May. And, my full album drops on June 6th! There will be a release show, so keep your eyes and ears peeled!

Pre-order Liana Warren's album here: