She is like a hurricane and has a voice like the best singers in the big days of Rock'n Roll. SAINT LU is refreshingly modern and brings back passion into music. When other contemporary singers rely on mainstream pop or pretentious phrasing alone SAINT LU offers a powerful and rough voice right from her guts: Pure and real, outright and outspoken. Songs like Don't Miss Your Own Life and Love Song catch the listener’s breath and ear. Rock as rock can!  Her influences can easily be detected: Led Zeppelin, Big Mama Thornton, Janis Jopin, and Jimi Hendrix – whom LU rightly counts as one of the real great singers. "I am not really into vocal embellishments. They are like punctuation marks. For me it is important that the vocals narrate the story of the song – and Jimi was a master in that", says SAINT LU. Her songs are developed in a similarly original way – usually on jam sessions. She starts improvising over a guitar riff until the lyrics come naturally. “I just start singing and eventually the word fragments start making sense. There is always something rolling around in my subconscious.”

SAINT LU started singing when she was eight. She practiced singing since she was fourteen in front of an audience, which was her best vocal coach. After growing up in a little village near Wels she founded her first band as a teenager and traveled through all of Austria playing her own songs. It always was rock music that attracted her instinctively.  “When I was a little girl I had already heard all the records in my older sister’s collection. Until I was twelve I didn’t even know there was other music but rock”, she smirks.  After finishing school she went to Austin, Texas for some experience. “I carried two bags”, she remembers. “One was stuffed with my clothes and the other with my notebook and music equipment. That one was twice the size of the first one.” After a few months cross-countrying the United States (“My host family set a high value on me exploring the country.”) New York caught her attention where SAINT LU worked on her new songs with befriended musicians.     Back in Austria SAINT LU enrolled in a drama school but shortly before her finals she found that her heart lies in music. “They wanted to kick me out in my freshman year anyway because of my “weird” voice.” So she collected her band and paid for a recording session in a studio. She sent that demo to quite some producers – amongst which was Echo-awarded Patrik Mayer (Wir sind Helden) who invited her to Berlin. After their first meeting she packed her bags and moved to the capital at once.
This was a little more than one year ago and by now SAINT LU and Mayer have almost recorded a full album. To stay as close to the 70’s rock sound as possible, guitar virtuoso Peter Weihe (Eric Clapton, Chaka Khan, Rio Reiser) was invited to play. No efforts were spared to get the most off SAINT LU’s remarkable songs: Marlon Browden (John Scofield, Vernon Reid, Norah Jones) played the drums, Christian Lohr (Joss Stone) for keyboards was visited in Munich where he has a storage room filled with vintage keyboards. For the finishing touches they went to the Abbey-Road-Studios in London to complete the arrangements recording horns and strings conducted by Steve Sidwell (Seal, Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams).

“Finally everything is like I wanted it to be”, says SAINT LU. “Every single note, each word – everything is exactly like I heard it in my head. I did not have to accept compromises.”

And how did this exceptional voice come about? “I grew up in the country on a farm. No neighbor as far as the eye reaches. If you had something to tell somebody you simply had to start yelling: “Luuuuuuuuuuuuuunchtiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime” or “Teeeeeeeleeeeeephooooooone!” There are whole conversations going on like this. I believe that shaped my voice”, laughs one of the most exciting singers of today:
SAINT LU.