Genevieve

[Genevieve plays Star Theater Friday, March 25.]

There are a few lyrics in Genevieve’s debut song “Colors” which are the most apt representation of who she is as an artist, what she wants to convey and how she has made it to the place she is now. In the very first verse, she sings, “Your life is your design, so go ahead and design it/ Your star is in the sky, so go ahead align it.”

That’s exactly what she has spent the last several years doing. Traveling back to 2013, Genevieve Schatz and bandmates in the alt-rock group Company of Thieves were preparing to part ways. Despite finding a good amount of success as a group, releasing a couple albums and touring with bands like OK Go and The Hold Steady, Genevieve felt called to Los Angeles to start working on a project that was exclusively her own. She admits venturing out on her own was a daunting process. For the first time in her career she was being looked at, not as a piece to a bigger picture, but as the entire product. “Colors,” released in 2014, was largely inspired by this feeling of wanting to represent herself and express herself but being afraid of how quick the world is to tear apart that expression.

Genevieve’s debut EP, Show Your Colors, was released later in 2014 and is predominately recognized for the shimmering pop supernova that is “Colors.” But on the whole, the album showcases a broad range both sonically and thematically. For all her trepidation about being judged as an individual, Genevieve’s voice absolutely needs to be heard. Of the songs on the five-song EP, “Authority” feels like the best glimpse of what Genevieve is trying to capture in her music; both vulnerable and uplifting, this is the song that it seems Genevieve is able to unapologetically show her colors.

—Sarah Eaton