Moollz at West Hollywood’s Peppermint Club where our Music Director landed last night for a preview (with Mom in tow)

by Natalie Durkin
Photography by Lisa Durkin

Moollz transported The Peppermint Club in West Hollywood to a galaxy far west from Los Angeles. Each key she tapped on her keyboard and each note she belted out was made possible by the light and love she exudes. She didn’t just leave her heart onstage; she sent it flying into the audience for her emotions to be made tangible for everyone in the room.

MOOLLZ

Moollz is the current brainchild of Molly Kirschenbaum, a songwriter, producer, musician, and vocalist from Los Angeles. Kirschenbaum’s inspirations for Moollz include Bjork, St. Vincent, Sylvan Esso, David Bowie, and Radiohead. Musically, she started at the age of five with classical piano lessons (which she decidedly hated), then moved to keyboards, bass guitar, vocals, washboard, vocal looping, drums, and production/engineering. She has played at various name venues like the Whisky-a-Go-Go, The Lyric, the House of Blues, the Mint, The Knitting Factory, Fais Do Do, and Room 5, as well as accompanying the Pretty Little Demons (now The Regrettes) as a bassist and backup vocalist at Lollapalooza. Her spare time is spent with her cat, Laura, and her wonderful collection of houseplants.

click here to here Moollz music:

The Artist Side

Girlfriends after lunch by Moollz

TribeLA Magazine Acrostic Interview.5

Natalie: Room – Where in your house do you work? If not in your house, where do you feel most compelled to create?
Molly: I work mostly in my living room or in my backyard, but I think of my best ideas in my shower, my favorite “room” in the house. It has these floor-to-ceiling dark blue tiles and a little window filled with plants and you can see the tops of the trees through the glass, and I always just feel so at peace and very inspired in that space, as well as vulnerable, which is always important when it comes to creating!

Natalie: Tools – What do you prefer to work with, physically and otherwise?
Molly: I’m very into oil pastels, compressed charcoal, and acrylic paints. I’ve realized I just always end up working with my hands no matter what I’m doing, I just end up using my hands to smudge or drip or finger-paint. I’m always a mess within seconds of starting a project. I love really big paint brushes, as well, and I also have been experimenting with collage! I also generally work with figure models to get the right energy and proportions, and have been working on increasing the personalization of portraits.

Read entire Acrostic here.
Read Natalie Durkin’s interview here.

Photo by Lisa Durkin

Natalie Durkin is a content contributor and social media assistant at TribeLA. She is a student at Bard College in New York’s idyllic Hudson Valley and returns intermittently to L.A. to see her parents and black Labrador Retriever, Buoy. Don’t ask her what she is majoring in; she doesn’t know yet, but she plans on pursuing a career in drama therapy. Once, she was a debutante. Sometimes, she is an actress, waterskier, and snow skier. She is always a Sex and the City fan, animal lover, and proud Angeleno. Nat’s website is: https://nataliedurkinwriting.wixsite.com/nataliedurkin