Lucius is, from left, Peter Lalish (guitar/vocals), Holly Laessig (lead vocals/ keys), Dan Molad (drums/vocals), Jess Wolfe (lead vocals/synth) and Andrew Burri (guitar/drums/vocals).“Songbird” is a word bandied about a lot to describe vocalists, but in the case of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, it’s too apt to avoid.
Like a pair of swallows flying in tight formation, Wolfe’s and Laessig’s vocals twine about each other in harmonies so knife-sharp and precise they’re shocking even to their bandmates in the Brooklyn-based pop quintet Lucius.
“When they’re singing, I’ll try and figure out who’s singing what part, and all of a sudden, they’ll sing the same thing,” says guitarist/vocalist Peter Lalish. “They just went into this [band] as, ‘Hey, let’s do this as one two-headed beast with one sound, one voice.'”
Despite their almost biologically identical vocals and playfully identical costumes and silver-dyed hair, Laessig and Wolfe are not related. They first met as vocal students at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where they participated in a number of projects together before meeting fellow Berklee alums Lalish and Danny Molad (drums/vocals).
Molad and Lalish had been collaborating for more than a decade when they met their future co-lead vocalists, who chose Molad’s studio to produce a four-song EP. After hearing their preliminary recording for “Go Home,” Lalish says, he became enthralled with their vocal chemistry.