Organic and delicately layered, the music can be subtle then triumphant, unspooling like a singular song in a hazy daydream. Confessions, emotions and imagery wash over you, and the sonic effect is akin to a collage artist working with atypical colors. With each listen, more is revealed.

– Brian Tucker, StarNews

Not just a singer-songwriter, Justin Lacy is an arranger, stop-motion animator and music video filmmaker. In 2018, Lacy premiered “Weeds” ⁠— a construction-paper music video he stop-motion animated entirely by hand, frame by frame, for 2,609 frames.  His oddball vocal delivery of imagery steeped in sweeping orchestral folk arrangements has earned him a signature sound difficult to pin down.

Lacy grew up in Carteret County, on the coast of North Carolina. After moving to Wilmington, NC, Lacy performed in several bands, eventually forming Justin Lacy and the Swimming Machine, a nine-piece folk outfit utilizing all manner of odd instrumentation (there was even a tap dancer on some nights), and in 2012, he released his debut full-length album, “Overgrown,” an almost seamless album that, according to Encore Magazine, “frolics and bows, flits and exaggerates, whispers and screams.”

In April 2017, Lacy released his second full-length album, “Control Burn.” With a bright ensemble of synthesizers, glockenspiels and celestas fashioned around Lacy’s chiming nylon-string guitar, quirky voice and imaginative yet vulnerable lyrics, the album is at-times dark, but ultimately optimistic. As album art creator Jonathan Guggenheim put it, it’s the sound of “bittersweet blossoms that somehow seem to sting … It feels like a break-up album that pieced itself back together with bubble gum and baby bird eggs.”

Lacy has completed 2 film scores, 3 EPs, and 4 albums. Today, he often performs with an orchestral ensemble of clarinets, mandolins, strings and voices, sometimes cramming up to 12 musicians on stage. These orchestral arrangements are the basis for his newest full-length, “Carousel.”