Saya Gray: Saya review – oddball heartbreak anthems bounce around pop history
If not a genuine oddball, Saya Gray is at least a very entertaining self-stylist. A self-proclaimed 'vagabond', she has talked about having ESP and perfect pitch from birth. The Toronto producer and vocalist's debut album proper can't possibly live up to all this bluster but it is a thoroughly enjoyable ride: a set of elastic, translucent songs that draw equally from quirked-up TikTok music – think Kate Nash-style vocals, dreamy Frank Ocean production – as they do yacht rock, country and AOR.
Most contemporary genre-mash music is unsatisfying because it feels like the result of an inability to commit; Gray's clear, direct, idiosyncratically referenced songs don't have that problem. Puddle (of Me) sounds a little like Björk covering America; Thus Is Why (I Don't Spring 4 Love) is a three-and-a-half minute survey of every popular sound circa 2009. There's a universality to Gray's lyrics – which, on Saya, are generally about heartbreak – that feels particularly sturdy and comforting on a crisp, serene song like Thus Is Why.
The more traditional songs here – Puddle and How Long Can You Keep Up a Lie in particular – place Gray in a lineage of sharp-tongued romantics, though their effect is blunted some by self-consciously 'experimental' passages, like the percussive breakdown on Line Back 22 or the trap beats at the beginning of HBW and Exhaust the Topic, which feel drawn straight from a playbook titled Weird, But Not Too Weird, Things to Do on a Pop Album. In these moments, she sounds like everyone else. But elsewhere on Saya, Gray has the makings of a true original.
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