Till now, Saya Grey’s initiatives all shared an identical work-in-progress allure. The titles of her debut LP, 19 Masters, and subsequent QWERTY and QWERTY II EPs learn like unexpectedly typed placeholders that by no means received modified earlier than being despatched off to the label. On her second album, the Japanese-Canadian songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist permits her scavenged, fragmented artwork pop to cohere into one thing resembling a conventional breakup file. Rather than earlier releases’ slippery music buildings and summary lyrics, Saya as a substitute attracts intrigue from the sophisticated determine at its heart: Grey could be fussy and prickly or regal and poised, her songs much less an exploration of grandiose heartbreak than the quieter disappointment of realizing that the individual you thought may deal with all of you really can’t. Which is a disgrace for them, as a result of to satisfy Grey on her phrases is to listen to her make good on the promise of 2023’s “Preying Mantis!”, reiterated right here on closing monitor “Lie Down”: “I can flip your mud into sparkles.”
If her older data have been abstract-expressionist splatters, every music on Saya is extra like a Dutch nonetheless life, gilded with immaculately detailed grape leaves and oyster shells. Tracks like “How Lengthy Can You Hold Up a Lie?” may even elicit the dreaded C-word—typical—if not for his or her thoughtfully utilized manufacturing touches and Grey’s uncooked songwriting muscle. Elsewhere on the album, her collagist impulses nonetheless flourish, albeit in a extra managed style. Starting as a blocky jazz-pop waltz, “Line Again 22” takes a tough swerve right into a breakdown of drums and wordless vocalizing that will match proper in alongside Meredith Monk’s Dolmen Music or Laurie Anderson’s Huge Science.
In a little bit of transitional magic, the final hiccuping pulse of “Line Again 22” melts seamlessly into “Puddle (Of Me),” considered one of Saya’s highest highs and, emotionally, possibly its lowest low. “You know the way obsessed I can get/Together with your needle and thread pulling out and in of me,” Grey sings, nestled in an uncanny valley of backtracked guitars. It’s each a come-on and a capitulation—a little bit bit unhappy, a little bit bit horny. The pleasure of full submission, in spite of everything, is inseparable from the worry of opening your self as much as harm. However ever the trickster, Grey flips the script on the lead single, “Shell (Of a Man),” and he or she’s going to make it sting: “In case you don’t like me now, you’re gonna hate me later!” With its jaunty fingerpicking, “Shell” makes for a superbly twee Trojan Horse, like handing Natalie Portman in Backyard State a microphone, asking her to inform us how she actually feels, then throwing the audio on the movie’s Grammy award-winning soundtrack.
