After SZA, Phlo, Kid A and Jhené comes the latest and possibly greatest of the new ethereal soul girls
Hometown: Hamilton, Canada.
The lineup: Jessy Lanza (vocals).
The background: A reader of this column wondered the other day whether "new music has been a bit weaker this year than the last couple of years". We're guessing he won't have that sinking feeling today (we have a database on all our respondents and their individual tastes) because Jessy Lanza is one of those new artists that does indeed make us unreservedly exclaim, "This is the best thing ever - you must listen now!"
Well, there is one reservation, although it's hardly a criticism as such. And it's that Lanza is the latest in a line of solo female musicians of the sort we have been praising round these parts recently - we're talking about Phlo Finister, Jhené Aiko, Kid A, SZA and the new wave of ethereal R&B females. She's one of several, rather than a bolt out of the electronic pop blue. But, boy – girl, whatever – is she good. Hers are our kind of vocals: high, a series of careless whispers, vaporous not vapid, and dispassionate meant as a compliment, as though passion itself can be measured in spittle and spume. And the production – which runs the gamut of computer-dance styles from disco, house, techno and electrofunk to glitchy R&B – is sublime.
Who supplies said production? That Ontario hometown mentioned above is a clue: why, it's none other than Canadian synthpop whiz Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys, who pretty much invented the idea of an indie take on UK 2step and Timbaland/Rodney Jerkins-style avant-R&B with the 2004 release Last Exit. That was an album of the decade. The one he's recorded with Jessy Lanza, Pull My Hair Back, is an album of 2013, right up there in our personal pantheon with Disclosure, Daft Punk, Breakbot, Toro Y Moi and Jensen Sportag.
And it's on Hyperdub! It's something of a departure for the label, but with digressions like this who needs reiterations? Pull My Hair Back is a classic of post-Cassie sighing over beats and sounds that nod to what Lanza calls "the golden age of R&B – the 90s – with Ginuwine, Aaliyah, etc" while taking into account developments, some of them instigated by Hyperdub, in postdubstep studiotronics. As the title suggests, Pull My Hair Back is an essay in eroticism, but it's never overt – none of what Todd Rundgren termed in the Guardian "R&B histrionics". Sex isn't shoved in your face – Lanza plays it cool, glacially so, even when she's singing about doing it Against the Wall. The beats aren't quite as billowy and deconstructed as Felix Snow's ones for SZA, say, but they are uniformly excellent.
There are faster tracks whose sci-fi sonics never cease to surprise and then a number like Kathy Lee will come along like a dream of an '80s slow jam. Eras are drawn on, because that's what they're there for: Strange Emotion is brilliantly soulless, with prog keyboards and an acid bassline, like Teena Marie meeting Timbaland and Tangerine Dream during the techno era. Keep Moving is just perfect, like Aaliyah being haunted by the ghost of Sharon Redd, Sharon Brown or Vicky D – one of those postdisco girls – on the Prelude label in 1982. Pull My Hair Back finds Lanza lost in spaciousness, declaring, "I don't give a fuck what you do," over a startlingly spare production like the Weeknd if he was a woman realising hedonism comes at a price. If 2011-12 was all about the boys – Tyler, Abel, Earl, Drake, A$AP, Danny Brown – then 2013 is all about the ladies. And few things have been as enjoyable this year as Jessy Lanza's girl powerlessness as she succumbs to sex and the studio.
The buzz: "Damn, Jessy Lanza was amazing."
The buzz: "Damn, Jessy Lanza was amazing."
The truth: It's a minor masterpiece of postdubstep disco, or postdisco dubstep.
Most likely to: Put the record on repeat.
Least likely to: Pull our hair back.
What to buy: Pull My Hair Back is released by Hyperdub on September 9.
File next to: Nite Jewel, Junior Boys, Cooly G, Sally Shapiro.
Links: Facebook.com/Jessy-Lanza
Monday's new band: Kill J.
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