Irene Diaz

Throughout her life, Irene Diaz has always been about The Search. For identity. For expression. For music and her place in it, and for a creative community and direction that best serves her mission.

All of that can be found in Diaz's songs and on Lovers & Friends, the California singer-songwriter's debut full-length album which was recorded in both Mexico City and Los Angeles. With its captivating melodies and richly nuanced ambience, it introduces Diaz as an artist who's taken many paths to get to this point, and is excited to find even more creative roads to travel as she moves forward.

"I'm always questioning and I'm always trying to just figure it out, even though I'm never going to figure it out," Diaz says. "There's so much we don't know about. But when I write, I write very subconsciously. It just kind of comes out of me and I follow wherever it's leading. It's almost like a book, like a biography. I consider it that."

Diaz's journey has been involved, for sure. She was raised in Los Angeles' Highland Park neighborhood in a devoted Christian household. Her father was a guitarist in the family's church band and introduced Diaz to Amy Grant and "various Christian artists." She herself learned piano and then started playing acoustic guitar—a kind of teen "rebellion" against her father's electric guitar focus—and began writing mostly religious songs when she was 16 years old. 

As she moved through colleges—including Marymount College, Pasadena City College and Seattle Pacific University—Diaz ultimately pulled away from the church and her religious faith. "I had a lot of questions," she acknowledges, some of which were stoked by a short time spent in the International Church of Christ. "I questioned the whole idea of hell. When I came back home when I was 22 I decided that I just wanted to explore life and kind of pull away from the faith, which was really difficult for me. I had a lot of fears—like what's going to happen to me when I die? I had been in the Christian faith for so long...but it wasn't fulfilling for me anymore."

Diaz devoted herself to music at that point, broadening her range of writing and of listening. "When I was 23 one of my friends introduced me to Nina Simone," she recalls, "and I fell in love with the theatrical element of her writing. Another friend introduced me to Nick Drake, and the guitar picking in his music really influenced me, too." Currently, Diaz notes, she listens to "pretty much everything. During the recording process we were listening to Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Sia, that kind of stuff, but I'm not focused on one particular artist. I'm just pulling from everywhere." 

As Diaz's repertoire grew, some of Lovers & Friends' tracks began to take shape. "Another Observer," the album’s pulsating lead single being released via Cosmica Records and distributed by Ingrooves, grew out of an unrequited crush on another woman circa 2010, while the danceable and hook-laced pop track "Wrapped Around My Finger" started out around 2014 as "a gospel kind of hand-clapping song" that would morph several times over before its finished version on the album. Things ultimately began taking shape after Diaz connected with fellow singer-songwriter Carla Morrison, a Latin Grammy award-winner, who executive-produced Lovers & Friends and introduced Diaz to brothers Alejandro and Demian Jimenez, a Mexico City-based duo that began enhancing Diaz's songs with electronic soundscapes and moody textures that envelope and elevate her lyrics. "When I first started this project back in 2017 I had this idea the music was going to be very much like Adele, very gospely, and it took a twist from there," Diaz says. "They just pulled apart my songs, which is something I wanted. I wanted to challenge myself and break away and see what someone else could do, and I really got that." She admits that "it was difficult for me to do it. The songs had been written and I thought they were the best they could be, but (the Jimenezes) pushed me and there was a lot of push and pull, but I'm really happy with where they took me and how they came out."

Lovers & Friends is, in effect, a new beginning for Diaz and a fresh destination for what's been a long musical path. What began in 2013 with the I Love You Madly EP—and praise from NPR’s Felix Contreas raving “her sheer power belies her compact stature, and her musical impact is simply immense”—Diaz is anxious to take the new music on the road and play live. At the same time, Diaz is already eyeballing her next creative Way station. "This has been a big project that I never imagined taking so long," she says. "I'm anxious to start and I'm already starting on the next music, and working with the guys I've realized I want to produce my own music, or at least bring more solid, more complete demos to a producer. It's like taking one step at a time -- but this is a big step right now." Lovers & Friends is expected in 2020. 

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