- Singing songs originally written for others, Jessy Lanza comes up with her tightest, catchiest and somehow most personal record yet.
- On the cover of her new album, Love Hallucination, Jessy Lanza is nestled on top of a palm tree in a bright yellow cherry picker, backgrounded by the hazy hills and wispy blue skies of Los Angeles. In this one image, Lanza captures the songwriting style she's developed over the last decade, where she masks sometimes-hard-edged lyrics about life with warm and breezy, R&B inflected synth pop. LA recently became her home after moving from Hamilton to New York to San Francisco. Though it's something of a cliché—singer-songwriter moves to LA to write music for famous people—thankfully, the cover art is the album's only real clue of Lanza's relocation. Instead, she takes songs she originally had in mind for other artists and paradoxically the ability to write for someone else's voice results in Lanza's brashest, most self-assured songs yet.
On Love Hallucination Lanza gets explicit about her needs emotionally and in the bedroom, shining a refreshing light on female pleasure (see also: fellow Canadian Carly Rae Jepsen). On "Midnight In Ontario," co-produced with Jacques Greene, Lanza touches on the tricky relationships so many women have with their own gratification: "Say nothing is for sure / No, I'm not guaranteed / Then why am I losing? / Why do you get the best of everything," she sings over a brooding 2-step beat that accents her words.
On "Marathon" she gets into the real nitty-gritty, sounding mildly exasperated when she sings "And I don't like that position, no / If I come once it's not enough [It's never enough]," before telling her lover she's a "cutthroat." She's so cutting that it makes the listener question whether she even likes the person she's sleeping with, as she nonchalantly tells them, "You talk too much / You don't like to listen / I don't think you're very funny / Sorry."
In the past, Lanza has spoken about her love for the Scottish comedian Limmy, whose dark humour touched her because it "trips on the banal." On "I Hate Myself," Lanza repeats the title for almost the entire song, floating over shimmering melodies that conjure images of dolphins skipping across the Pacific. Lanza has always known when to let her instrumental tracks breathe, and on "I Hate Myself" she allows the musical juxtaposition speak for itself rather than expanding on her words. "Drive" riffs on the simple pleasure of driving, also letting the music do the work. It's easy to imagine cruising around a place like LA, soft-top down, hair blowing in the wind, bopping to the track's bouncy groove and wistful flutes.
On "Limbo"—one of the album's biggest tunes thanks to its its Fergie-style chorus, spelling out "L-I-M-B-O"—Lanza reveals another facet of herself, with a subtle sneer: "It's like getting water from the moon / I couldn't if I wanted to." She's poking fun at herself, stuck with feeling unfulfilled by her situation but equally incapable of walking away from it, with a punchline that hits square in the nose.
Whatever she's writing about, Lanza's songs and the momentum they build have a way of taking the listener on a journey with her. The album's pacey house opener "Don't Leave Now" was written during a bout of agoraphobia after she was nearly hit by a car only a few days into her new life in LA. Repeating the verse, "I'm walking real slow / And the cars go away / Already know / Don't make me say," the listener gets into Lanza's head space as she seems to ask herself "how the fuck did I just nearly get run over?" Then there's "Casino Niagara", another song about orgasms, which throws the listener into the centre of the action—thanks to the silky, electro-funk instrumental—as Lanza breathily demands a climax in the chorus.
For Lanza, the feel-good element of pop music has always been key, and on Love Hallucination, she doubles down on that idea, making light conversation of everything from simple pleasures like driving to heavier topics like orgasms, self-loathing and near-death experiences. Backed by a cast of co-producers like Pearson Sound, Tensnake and Paul White, she expands her sound to fit these more bracing topics, without losing the DIY charm that made her an instant star to begin with. Instead of asking what LA could bring for Lanza, it seems more fitting to ask what Lanza brings to LA—a welcome dose of self-awareness.
Tracklist01. Don't Leave Me Now
02. Midnight Ontario
03. Limbo
04. Casino Niagara
05. Don't Cry On My Pillow
06. Big Pink Rose
07. Drive
08. I Hate Myself
09. Gossamer
10. Marathon
11. Double Time