Los Angeles, California - November 3, 2026 - Photos by Regan Jones
It’s far and few between that the venue an artist occupies for the night feels utterly kismet. So when Lennon Stella decides to return to the stage after a six-year break from making music, Pico Union Project opens its doors for her.
Inside Los Angeles’ oldest synagogue, it only takes a dimly lit room washed in orange and yellow hues to create an extension of Stella’s new album, Sleeping Lion. Intricately colored stained-glass windows and rows of deep brown pews greet an eager audience who have been waiting for this moment since the release of her last record, Three. Two. One., back in 2020.
But there’s a different air that hovers over this new project. Lighter, warmer, and kinder, Sleeping Lion, produced by critically acclaimed artist Andy Shauf, arrives with a groundedness Stella knew needed time to get just right. Now, she sits from a place where the world doesn’t feel as harrowing and extends the same hand of comfort to whoever’s listening –– to leave your shoes at the front door and linger in her living room for a while.
Buzzing chatter turns into a fit of roaring cheers as Stella settles herself onto a wooden chair at center stage alongside her guitarist, Isabel Shaye. Crafting a set that plays from top to bottom, the night unfolds into a one-of-a-kind listening experience for every song. A specific moment in her life spelled out in “Comedy Show” opens the door to a book that lets the crowd into the margin notes when she hangs onto the last word of the lyric, “Feeling like shit, thinking ‘bout what you did,” for a few seconds longer, or tightly shuts her eyes in "Unforgivable Things” as Shaye’s clarinet humming guides her fingers to the next chord. “I Still Want You” sweetly gushes about her seven-year relationship and the different places it goes. “This is straight up a love song. I don’t really write those,” she jokes.
At times, the audience’s polite awe takes her aback, returning her words in a chorus of hushed whispers. “If you’d like to sing along, you definitely can. You’re singing so quiet,” she laughs. Being in the room on this night feels especially fleeting, an unspoken agreement among the audience until someone shouts, “You’re gonna be so famous. We’re never gonna hear you this well again!” But it’s no question Stella shares the same fondness for the intimate setting she’s curated for the four-show tour run, smiling as she admits, “I don’t know that I want that. I think I should do multiple nights in a small space like this forever.”
Reaching out from an inner-child perspective, “Ta Da’s” wispier vocals twirl with a longing for validation and approval, while “Peach” maintains the mellow flow with its graceful strumming: “This one is about me being a stress ball since childhood. And craving that go-with-the-flow, easy-going personality every once in a while.”
She’ll switch guitars for each one to accommodate its unique tuning, but steps away from the mic for “What’s There To Hold Onto.” Originally recorded with tinkering piano keys, she depends on the church’s high ceilings as a vehicle for her voice, which echoes louder during pockets of minimal rustling from the audience. The performance’s nature even mirrors its own lyrics when she sings, “Bending yourself into the shape / Of the space between what they want and who you are.”
The record ultimately sits on this exact foundation of ever-changing renditions, a hurdle Stella had to befriend in the six-year process. “I recorded a full other version of this record and ended up scrapping it,” she shares. “There were a lot of moments where I felt like I was confused by the challenge of it. I was like, ‘Why, if this is my path, and if this is what I should be doing, is it feeling so difficult?”
But a bright beacon imposing itself onto Stella kept her steady and hopeful: “And then every time I would have one of those moments, there would be something that would be as equally as –– the opposite of difficult,” she laughs. “Something would come through, and it would feel very much like a confirmation that I was supposed to do it.”
“You’re gonna get such a long text from me later,” Stella’s younger sister Maisy beams as she hugs the singer. The two share the stage for a sweet duet of “Whatever That Means,” their voices coalescing into silvery harmonies without strain from beginning to end, a synergy convincing enough to be a quality only bestowed upon sisters. She’ll scan the room with a tenderness during “Older Than I Am,” a bittersweet encore she now performs with gentle forgiveness, pausing when she sings a line too early to laugh before jumping back in.
Moments like this, or when she takes a second to retune a missed string, reveal the magic of a Lennon Stella stripped-down show. It’s vulnerable and unpredictable at times, but she takes it all in with admirable grace and open arms.
