The musicianship is spiritually maximalist. Avenue-wide choruses and whiplash chord modifications flood the senses, basically demanding these songs be carried out stay. It’s the best accompaniment for a singer who already gave the impression of a veteran, and whose considerations have been much less about how she was acquired by the world and extra concerning the state of her soul. Grey informed a number of interviewers on the time of On How Life Is’ launch that if she did succeed as large as Epic hoped she would, she’d report the 4 albums she was contracted for after which transfer to France along with her kids—a exceptional stance for a marquee act within the twilight of the top-down main label period.
That informal indifference flows by the album, however so do love and intercourse. Exterior of “I Strive,” it’s a distinctly grown strategy. “Caligula,” simply the horniest tune right here, is pure intercourse, a shuffling, drunken groove of hand-claps and languid digital organ. It’s not a lot love at first sight—Grey had already had that—as it’s a match lastly met. “I couldn’t imagine it/Hey, what’s your identify!” she calls on the refrain, cymbals and snares alternately crashing and retreating in a barely contained storm. “By no means lovin’, we’re at all times fuckin’,” Grey groans later, squeezing the juice out of the vowels. There’s no pursuit, simply the sweaty, drunken want of actual lust, a sense echoed on the summer-of-love-dripping “Intercourse-o-matic Venus Freak,” a celebration of a companion who brings out Grey’s finest, porn-star self in mattress, whipped cream included.
After which there’s “I Strive,” which has outlined Grey’s profession because the second it was pushed because the album’s second single. It’s an everlasting last-call anthem, a gather-around-the-piano torch tune for the ages, a as soon as and future traditional that continues to work. And for that motive it’s additionally far and away the album’s most calculated try at reaching for one thing simply identifiable and up to date: in Epic’s eyes, in all probability the palatable earnestness of late-’90s hits like Everlast’s “What It’s Like” or Deborah Cox’s “No one’s Purported to be Right here.” Buying and selling in On How Life Is’ wealthy musicality for a stripped-down bass, drum, and piano trio (with some strings sprinkled in), “I Strive” additionally dilutes Grey’s lyrical zaniness, these small particulars and large classes, the intercourse and loss and eccentricity, right into a story of unreciprocated crushing and common longing. Because it typically goes with The Massive Track, “I Strive” is in some ways the least Grey tune right here, the closest factor to a concession. Nothing else on On How Life Is is as rudimentary as its refrain, and nowhere else does Grey’s emotional state really feel so two-dimensional. But its nice irony is that for all of its familiarity, “I Strive” can be the closest the album involves an origin story, a real reflection of Grey’s innermost self: This can be a tune, actually, about wanting to speak and never figuring out how, of holding essentially the most highly effective fantasies just for your self, regardless of eager to share them with the world. And when she lastly will get these phrases out, she lands on nothing wanting how life actually is: a alternative and dedication, a collection of errors and redemptions, one thing, above all, value dwelling for.
