Till now, Saya Grey’s tasks 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 swiftly typed placeholders that by no means bought 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 standard breakup file. Instead of earlier releases’ slippery track constructions and summary lyrics, Saya as a substitute attracts intrigue from the difficult determine at its heart: Grey might 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 might deal with all of you really can’t. Which is a disgrace for them, as a result of to fulfill 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 track 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?” might 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 vogue. Starting as a blocky jazz-pop waltz, “Line Again 22” takes a tough swerve right into a breakdown of drums and wordless vocalizing that may 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/Along 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 damage. 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: “Should you don’t like me now, you’re gonna hate me later!” With its jaunty fingerpicking, “Shell” makes for a wonderfully 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.
