Labra Brothers’ New Song Is Worth the Wait
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — While mulling over the cover art for their new song, The Labra Brothers realized they already had a photo that illustrated the music.
The band will release “Waiting” on Friday, Jan. 28 – the latest song from their upcoming EP. The message of “Waiting” is that if you want change, you have to make it happen.
The cover art features a silhouetted photo of a sitting dog, repeated four times in Warhol-esque fashion. It seemed like the perfect choice.
Guitarist-singer Adrian Labra shot the photo a year ago while he was visiting his grandmother in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The dog is sitting on the roof of a building, watching and waiting.
“We had been out for a walk, and when we returned to the house, [my grandmother’s dog] Lucas was looking down at us from the rooftop,” Labra said. “I had to snag the picture. With the sun in the background, and the front of my grandma’s house showing at the bottom, I thought it looked pretty awesome. I showed my brothers and they all got a kick out of it.”
Fast forward to this month, when Adrian and his brothers – and bandmates – David, Cristian and Antonio were brainstorming ideas for art for the song.
“I was reminded of this photo,” Adrian said, explaining that “Waiting” is a song that attacks complacency; the lyrics assert that only today’s actions will determine what will happen tomorrow.
“We thought the photo of Lucas was fitting, since he’s obviously waiting on the rooftop, keeping watch over the neighborhood, staring down passersby, and probably waiting for us to return,” Adrian said.
The band members had the photo edited by Ethan Ngo, a freelance photographer, who gave them several different versions of his work. That gave the band the idea of using four iterations of the photo as cover art.
Labra said the photo can be seen as a symbolic representation of what the song is about: sitting and waiting and expecting good changes to come.
“The moral of the song is that only our actions and hard work will lead to the positive changes we want to experience in life,” Labra said.
A video of the band performing the song in a studio will be released Friday as well.
Labra is excited about the song for another reason.
“We feel like we’re inching closer to ‘our’ sound and have connected with this song in a way that hasn’t been true for all of our previous work,” he said. “We think it is an accurate culmination of our strongest musical influences, and it felt so natural to put it together, from its early stages, though the final touches added in production.”
The song also allows Antonio Labra, the youngest of the four brothers and the newest band member, to come to the forefront.
“He got a kick out of finally laying down some prominent percussion for a studio recording,” Adrian said. “We’re proud to put this out as a representation of The Labra Brothers music.”
Pictured: The cover art for “Waiting,” a new song by The Labra Brothers.
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