INTERVIEW: Irish Angeleno artist Levi Evans explores vulnerability, looks for his voice
Levi Evans, Photo: Casey Culver.
As a member of eclectic, freewheeling, 10-member L.A. collective NOFUN!, Levi Evans is all about fun and bravado. The group, which includes members from the Bay Area, Chicago, the East Coast, France—and in the case of Evans himself, Ireland—came together to play parties and show off the members’ individual talents, from pop to hip-hop.
Evans, 25, has been performing and making music since high school in L.A., when he got his start in a similarly juvenile (his words) music group with friends. Hip-hop was his first love—perhaps surprising, as he’s the son of U2’s The Edge.
But as he’s been focusing more on songwriting and singing with his own solo material, Evans realized that the party music he’d been making was a façade.
“I was putting on this bravado in these songs, which was me, but a lot of it was fueled by partying, fueled by these things that could mask our vulnerability, mask our insecurities,” he said in a video call from his home in central L.A. “I realized I’m actually this really sensitive, vulnerable guy. I was tired of putting on this alter ego where I was like, ‘I’m so macho, I could do this. I could do that.’ I had to come to terms with who I actually was and sometimes face these more difficult things.”
He’s been releasing solo songs since 2021, but his more recent material, including 2024 EP Head Chatter, has been addressing these more vulnerable sides. Now he’s planning another busy year, leading up to his second EP. He began in February with “Run,” a catchy bit of percussive, early aughts-sounding alt-rock warning about the folly of following predators.
If the lyrics escape you or are overpowered by the bouncy melody, the accompanying video telling the classic wolf in sheep’s clothing story—which Evans conceptualized and creative-directed—is inescapable. He describes the song as an outsider’s warning about someone’s ulterior motives.
“Ingesting all this media and the current state of the country … will reflect in the work that I do, unintentionally,” he said.
His next release is “Lay Me by Your Side,” an airy jangle pop tune about overcoming conflicts in a relationship and overcoming their differences.
“The lyric is, ‘When I’m in a coffin, lay me by your side,’” he said. “Despite all these conflicts, at the end of the day, I want to share this lifetime with this person, despite all the fights, despite everything. … There’s something beautiful about letting the story kind of come together. … You get this emotion from a piece of music, and you sort of channel this story that could be bigger than you, that could be bigger than your individual experience.”
Other songs Evans has ready to go also carry visual titles, such as “Mile High” and “Barstool Rose.” The latter is about an image he had of beauty amid a grim or grimy setting, quite literally a dirty bar. It’s concept he said he’s tried to write about before, but the end results had never worked out, until now.
For him to consider a song good enough to release, it must be authentic to him, he said. Because his goal is to be performing his songs to as many people as possible, he has to fully believe in them. He said the songs from his forthcoming EP all share a sonic through line, exploring themes of love and conflict, sometimes from the perspective of an observer.
On stage and in the studio, his bandmates include NOFUN! members Huebline on guitar and SWANN on bass, as well as a rotating cast of drummer friends. Evans himself plays guitar. The group, which includes ZooDeVille from Vacaville and WADE08 from Oakland, formed after several chance encounters.
Evans met SWANN in high school, where both were members of the same hip-hop group. When he first arrived in the U.S., the French emigrant didn’t know a word of English, Evans noted. Evans met Huebline during his one semester at the University of Miami, before he traded a formal education for interning at recording studios. Huebline soon moved to L.A. Every member introduced new friends to the group.
In addition to music, as a teen, Evans enjoyed drawing, with the hopes of becoming an animator. This creative side has translated to Evans having a hand in all his music videos, from casting to production.
A musical family
Levi Evans on his relationship with Bono’s son Eli Hewson, the frontman of Inhaler, and whether they’d collaborate on music.
“We, me and Eli, are basically brothers. I spent so much time with that family. You know we lived in Ireland together. We’d go to France together in the summer. For such a long time, we were so close, and we’re still so close. Inhaler is such a busy thing, and I just saw John [Hewson], his younger brother, for the first time in a long time. It really does feel like family. …
Our girlfriends are in New York, so when they have time off, a lot of the time our paths cross. They hadn’t crossed for many years because I’ve been in L.A. They were touring a bunch. They lived at the base in Ireland. We’ve been seeing each other a lot more. It’s been great because … they really are family to me, and some of my oldest friends.
We [Evans and Eli Hewson] talk about music, we talk about advice or how we feel, especially being in this very particular situation, pursuing this thing in sort of a shadow. I think our experience is incredibly unique. Guys sometimes will hesitate to dive into these deeper things with their friends. We have been talking about this situation because it is a very unique thing. We can only really relate to each other about it. There’s no one else that we can talk to that really has had this experience.
When it comes to collaboration … there’s no talk about that. They’re very separate projects. … Maybe in the future, the songwriting or whatever. But we are very, very close.”
He said he still doodles, and his sketches work their way into his videos. For “Run,” on which he partnered with frequent visual collaborator Mason Luckiewicz, that included arts and crafts. He made the sheep and wolf costumes using leftover Amazon boxes.
“There was no blueprint or anything,” he said. “I kind of just measured out the parts, did the thing with hot glue, got some fabric from Michael’s, just hoping for the best.”
Evans is also a boxing fan and enthusiast—in the past he’s studied martial arts and kickboxing—and more recently has been getting into modern dance. His mother, Morleigh Steinberg, is a professional dancer, but he credits the newfound interest to his girlfriend and her friends. The goal is for dancing to make him a stronger on-stage performer.
“I think it’s really important, especially for a ‘live’ thing, to be able to move well,” he said, adding that he took a class before picking up more skills online. “You can learn everything on YouTube now. I’m slowing it down to half the speed and just copying. It’s been fun.”
Evans said the most important advice his parents have shared with him about working in the music industry wasn’t about musicianship or performance, but about treating everyone he comes across, from other musicians to label employees or technicians, with respect.
“Whoever I want to work with or whoever I’m brushing shoulders with, I think it’s really important to just be nice,” he said. “The most important thing is just to be a good person.”
Following the fires that devastated the L.A. area in January, Evans’ parents temporarily moved in with him. Even his sister, who’d returned from college on the East Coast, is living under the same roof. While his childhood home wasn’t destroyed by the Palisades Fire, much of their community was decimated, as was the infrastructure.
Evans said his family was lucky. One bright spot was living under the same roof as his family again.
“Me and my sister haven’t lived together for a very long time. She went away to college,” he said. “Then, like all of a sudden, I’m living with my parents again. This is like a blast from the past.”
Contact editor Roman Gokhman at Bluesky.