We probably could have made something normal, but instead we built an entire circus around a damaged doll named Maribel.
LA LA CIRCUS arrives October 28, and it’s the darkest and strangest project we have worked on so far. The album has heavier guitars, electronic sounds and pieces of carnival music that don’t exactly make you want to stay for the full show.
The circus is fictional, but the main subject behind the album is abuse. It looks at how abuse can be hidden behind bright lights, jokes and people pretending everything is fine. Sometimes it is physical, but a lot of the album also deals with manipulation, gaslighting, obsession and convincing somebody that harmful behaviour is actually love.
Maribel, the Violet Room and the performers underneath the tent aren’t real people, but the emotions behind them came from real places inside Folded Paper Hearts. We took our experiences with addiction, damaged relationships, control and pretending to be okay and placed them inside fictional characters.
I guess sometimes it’s easier to write about the truth when you dress it up and put it under a circus tent.
At the centre of the album is Maribel, the Doll Queen. She grew up beneath the circus tent, where abuse was treated as part of the show and the crowd kept cheering. Eventually, she takes control of the place that damaged her. Maribel isn’t really the hero or the villain. She is more like the thing the circus created and then lost control of.
We started with disconnected ideas about a doll, a circus fire and a room nobody should enter. Somehow, those ideas turned into an album. Millz helped bring the world to life with vocals and guitar, giving the project a heavier and more alternative-rock sound than what we normally make.
Songs like Violet Room, Maribel and Gaslight show different parts of the circus without giving away the entire story. They touch on abuse, obsession, addiction and people using control while calling it love. Each song is different, but they all lead back to the same place.
At its core, LA LA CIRCUS is about abuse becoming part of the performance. The crowd sees the costumes and lights but ignores what is happening to the person standing in the ring. The characters might be fictional, but the feelings behind them aren’t.
The tent opens October 28. Maribel will be waiting.
Pre-save LA LA CIRCUS by following the link below.