Wild West Village & Trailblazer by Lola Kirke

I am writing this with Zeppelin III on close to full max. You might have seen me write something similar to this before but in the last month or two I have fallen head over heels for Lola. She is a quadruple threat: she acts, sings, writes songs, she's hilarious and English. Quintuple threat.

Her (not a) memoir of her short life up to the age of just 33 / 34 is an achievement. Coco Mellors called it "riotously funny" which is not true. Riots are comparatively tame affairs. Lena Dunham called it "wise, witty and unsparing," which is true. Zoë Kravitz said it's the only book she will read this year, and it took me three minutes to find those double dot umlauty bits for the e in Zoë.

The whole entire point, and the reason Lola Kirke is not (yet) famous is because she has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. Except herself. She doesn't see herself the way we all see her, those of us who know her well. Which is anyone who has read her extremely pink book.

I discovered that the book goes deep into certain topics but glosses over some things that her wonderful album Trailblazer explains better. Let's look her dad, Simon Kirke, a founder member of both Bad Company and Free and still a comparatively sought-after drummer. She very definitely wants to love Simon. At times she very definitely does. But the pain and torment he visited on her mother in particular have cut her very deeply.

The pain is evident in the book, but less so the fun and joy that you discover in the song Zeppelin III. Once I was sure we were talking about the album and not either an airship or a classic car or a boat, the final clue of course being the reference to a tangerine in her song (Tangerine being track seven on the album) then it was clear that this was a love letter to her errant father, listing out all the great things he has given her including a killer sense of humour and a deep desire never to marry.

What I already got from Lola's idiosyncratic and unique Instagram account was a sense that she could be both self-deprecating and staggeringly arrogant and sometimes both at the same time. Once you realise that the arrogance is also a form of self-deprecation you are starting to understand her. Once you have seen her stark naked (apart from green ankle cowboy boots in the All My Exes video), covered in human blood (in Sinners) and sitting at a bar in a Bud Light costume I think you are pretty much fully informed. She is pure wonder in human form.

I have written about Trailblazer before. It is one of the reasons I wanted to read the book. But when you put the book alongside the music you realise they are two halves of the same subject, the subject being Lola and her life so far.

The "so far" is interesting. I am one of very many people who think she has an enormous future. I think her life so far has been training for when she is famous in her own right. She is the least fucked up member of her whole entire extended family. I care about her deeply. As will you. She is a rarity. Someone who feels English but sounds American. Someone with an English sense of humour and a deep understanding of America and Americana.

Lola is first and foremost a fan of American country music, and chose that path as a fan. She claims to have landed in Nashville "by mistake" as the pandemic took root in 2020. She turned out to be amazing at country music and quickly signed with a top record label, being One Riot, alongside legend Margo Price.

The only question in my mind today is this: will Lola Kirke be remembered more for the music or the acting, or for one day having the most talented little child ever conceived? Only time will tell. And if you were wondering, the proof that I properly love Lola is that I haven't banged on about it or made crude jokes. She is actual royalty and the best part is that she hasn't noticed yet.

Note The royalty bit is sort of true actually. Her grandmother is somehow related to landed gentry baronets. So there.