Shane Lavers, better known by his stage name Chanel Beads, is a week away from releasing the follow-up to his 2024 debut album. your day will come. In a strange and poignant move, he kept it the same name. Well, during my afternoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with 32-year-old Lavers, I would discover that she loves contrasts and the space between things. “My path was circuitous,” he says of his upbringing. “I didn’t really have any strong ambitions or direction. It was just this ambient frustration and inability to do anything.”
The musician grew up in Minnesota, moving there when he turned 18 in an effort to figure out what he wanted to do with his life and where he wanted to live – “just to get stuff done”, he says. He moved to Montana and then to Seattle, where he considered moving to LA but ultimately stayed there for love. They spent time playing house shows on weekends, experimenting with the boundaries of performance. But when his girlfriend felt like moving to New York, Lavers decided to go east with her. “That’s when I really had a perspective and felt a little more realized as a person.”
When he was participating in those house shows, he performed both as a band and solo. “Channel beads have always been amorphous,” he says. “It’s a band, and it’s not a band. It’s a solo thing, but it’s not a solo thing. It’s a conversation I’m having with myself and with people.”
On both their debut and its upcoming follow-up (coming June 26), their music is atmospheric and abstract, melodic and hazy. His vocals are androgynous. Sometimes, channel beads seem like both a dream and a nightmare.
When we meet at his record label’s office, Lavers and I spend part of a hot summer afternoon discussing the origins of Chanel Beads, why he decided to play back the name of his album, how he learned to be less precious about his favorite vintage hoodie and Werner Herzog.
gq: Do you have a first musical memory?
Shane Lavers: Growing up, my mom was crazy about Karen Carpenter and would play and sing along with her in the car. I remember “Rainy Days and Mondays”, in particular, was a song where (I) felt sadness. That’s still imprinted on my mind, that kind of organization and lack of pretense. Carpenters were very big to me as a child. When I was quite young, I watched a CD Never mind the bollocks, these are the Sex Pistols—I thought that was the best album cover. The words “Sex Pistols” were too tempting for me. This sparked, “Okay, I’m going to go figure out stuff myself.” (Did the same) Burning mixed CDs. My elder brother had really eclectic tastes, and so I used to listen to what he did. It was fun to have an opinion on something that was created by someone else.
