Toronto multi-instrumentalist Luna Li finds ‘Duality’ balancing rock, classical and pop on debut album

Seated in a forest green room, flanked by plants overflowing a wooden shelf, Luna Li is beaming. Clad in a canary sweater with gold and pearls coiled, then draped around her neck, the singer and multi-instrumentalist recalls that ever since she was a kid she knew she was going to be a musician.

All that was in question was what the music would sound like.

“I started piano when I was five, and then I started learning the violin after that, when I was seven or eight. And those were kind of my two main instruments as a kid.”

Li, born Hannah Bussiere, spoke with the Star ahead of the release of her debut album, which came out on March 4. The project, four years in the making, comes on the heels of Li garnering acclaim during the pandemic.

When everyone was locked in their house making bread, Li posted videos of her playing luxuriant, layered instrumentals in her bedroom on Twitter.

She dubbed them her “jams.” All were a minute or less and a few reached over a million views.

The adulation was enough to draw the eyes of over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, lead to an official “Jams” EP and receive an invite from Japanese Breakfast to join the indie pop act’s tour.

The album, “Duality,” is built atop those jams. Filled with the same harps, guitars, violins, keys, synths and drums, only richer, the production is sometimes ethereal, sometimes climactic, but always lush.

What Li told the Star was originally slated to be a “fun, simple, minimal indie record” became a mélange of sounds that wouldn’t make sense on paper, but audibly, perfectly balance each other.

“To me, I think everyone can relate to the concept of duality, which is just a balancing act and figuring out how opposing energies and opposing forces can come together and create balance in your life,” Li said.

Tracks like Li’s favourite “What You’re Thinking” show the explosive result the opposing forces of her classical and rock backgrounds can have.

Building a song that features a bitter electric guitar and a resentful hook only to be dealt a serene outro via tranquil harp and violin is a delicate dance. “What You’re Thinking” is a natural progression between instruments that while adventurous never feels disorganized.

It’s a dance Li relishes too, there’s no formula to the song creation.

“When I make a song, I try to switch it up every time to not have songs just be keyboards because I find that if I use the same instrument every time to start, it ends up being kind of the same song that I end up writing over and over again.”

Growing up Li’s mother ran a music school in Toronto with her partner. With easy access to teachers, students, instruments and a community, life as a classical musician seemed like a natural fit from the beginning for Li.

“It felt like that was a very straightforward path to take, something that had a little bit more security maybe than pursuing creating music in a band format,” she said.

Life isn’t that straightforward though.

After attending one semester at McGill University in Montreal for violin, Li realized she didn’t want to be there.

“I didn’t want to be in the classical world, so I dropped out.”

When Li moved back to Toronto she found herself taking an alternate path. As she got older she started playing the guitar and singing more. So, in 2015 when there was a garage rock explosion, Li decided to join the fray.

“I abandoned my classical background at that time because I was excited about trying something new.”

Already being able to play a handful of instruments, playing in bands and writing music meant a further expansion of her repertoire. Li ended up learning to play bass and drums as well. The growth in different instruments was normal to her, it was something she’d been accustomed to.

With time, though, she felt a calling back to her classical roots.

“My grandma asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I asked her to buy me a loop pedal. I meant to use it with my guitar, but then I plugged my violin in and realized that I could build these big soundscapes that sounded really orchestral and lush with just my one instrument by layering it,” Li said.

“So that was a turning point for me where I realized that I could use that sound in my music and incorporate the classical background into this more rock leaning or pop leaning sound and kind of combine those two sides of myself.”

It worked.

The balancing act even extends as far as Li’s lyrics, like on “Cherry Pit” where Li is speaking to her former self.

It’s a sanguine song that reflects positively on the past with a bit of warning to a younger version of herself after a sensory overloading intro breaks into a beachy guitar and dreamy vocals.

The constant grappling between these polarities is also what Li considers the basis for the album’s name. She recalled a conversation she had with her producer Braden Sauder in the studio when finishing the project.

“He noticed that basically in every song, there was never just one theme or one emotion,” Li said.

“If there is a happy song, there would always be some element of uncertainty or anxiety to go along with that. Or if it was a sad song with sad lyrics, there was still sometimes a happy melody, and it was always just a little bit of both.”

All of this has led to a genre that she defines as angel pop — a step away from bands like Beach House or Wild Nothing to use a kaleidoscopic approach to music. It’s a step in Tame Impala’s direction, by layering instruments to draw the listener into a dreamlike state, only to be enhanced by her near-Zen hooks.

Like Tame Impala, Li isn’t afraid to take her sound further, pulling more genres into the fold. Her expansion has an endless horizon.

“I would love to get more involved with the hip hop scene in Toronto. Obviously, there’s so much amazing stuff happening and I’ve found that the hip hop scene and the rock scene are totally separate from my experience. I think it’d be cool to start blending them together.”