Cooper B Handy, who performs under the DIY artist moniker LUCY, has been releasing demos for years and has owned every step of the songwriting, recording, and production process.
On Friday, The Cape Cod native released The Music Industry Is Poisonous, his first project to collaborate with other producers and mixers. While Handy did his own tracking on the album at the oldest house in Hadley, Massachusetts, he recorded vocals at Artifact Studios in Maspeth, New York, with Sasha Stroud and Jesse Paller, and mixed at Doorstep Studios in Los Angeles, with Tom Moore. It was all hands on deck for this project. Still, Cooper doesn't see this as a departure from his DIY ethos.
"I like to think of this as an experiment to see if the traditional way of recording and releasing music works for me," he says.
It would appear it has. The Music Industry Is Poisonous is a perfect culmination of LUCY's "outsider and unpretentious" style, which blends several genres to create a simultaneously infectious and personal sound. The album's second track, "Turn Page," is one of the best examples of this. The song serves as a bit of a memory trick, says Cooper, who wrote a refrain in which he attempts to remember the names of all of his school teachers.
"I like the idea of going back and trying to remember stuff in order," he says. "The whole idea with this song is about reminding people to remember things. Even as we're turning the page and moving on."
There's been a lot of buildup to The Music Industry Is Poisonous. Almost all of it was recorded pre-pandemic, and while Cooper has released other LUCY projects since its completion, he feels that the extra collaboration and support that went into this project has positioned it to have more impact on his career.
"It's more nerve-racking than any other release because I've been sitting on this for so long," he tells me. "I'm working with more people than I ever have before, on the business side, so I'm hoping that this album and this phase opens up opportunities for me."
Cooper was set to tour LUCY with King Krule in December 2020, but the tour was canceled due to the pandemic. Now, he hopes that his new project will put him on a path to tour when it's safe to do so in a more sensible way.
