Lyza Jane // Something In The Rye
(BMG)
Dreamy self-styled trip-pop from the chanteuse of the Blah Records omniverse.
Gliding through the Blah saloon doors where larger than life rogues spill out devilish wordplay over dank and deadly beats, Lyza Jane’s music possesses the kind of breathless delicacy that makes tough guys drop their bar stools, dust themselves down and think about their life choices.
For the uninitiated, Blah Records is one of the cornerstones of the modern UK hip-hop landscape, primarily focused on leftfield but true-skool rap swerves but with the capacity to flip the script when it suits them. Lyza Jane represents one such flip, having first come through with the Nobody But You EP in 2017 featuring Blah alumni Nah Eeto and Bisk followed by a collab EP with Sniff on the excellent, heavy-lidded Baby Blue Champion, in 2018. She built on the promise of these first records with her largely self-produced debut album proper, h.o.u.s.e.b.o.u.n.d.
Something In The Rye represents the first fully-formed release from Jane for a minute, following two self-produced tracks and a stunning cover of Echo & The Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’ from back in 2020. There’s a DIY trickle-down quality to the way her music has emerged so far, where most singers with her delivery and songwriting chops would be hauled through the industry machinations and pushed on targeted ad campaigns and airplay buyouts. She’s signed with BMG for this latest drop, so not exactly out on her own. Whether her approach to releasing music is a conscious choice or circumstantial, in some way it preserves the music’s intrinsic intimacy.
Riding way up the register, Jane’s voice is feather-light and dreamy. Calling it falsetto makes you think of opera singers shattering glass and this is a much mellower thing — her vocal sits so perfectly above the low-slung production, which on Something In The Rye comes from Lee Scott, Hyroglifics and Jack Chard. The closest reference point that comes to mind is Julee Cruise singing ‘The Nightingale’ in angelic repose while dudes have a dimly lit brawl at The Roadhouse.
It’s Hyroglifics who mans the buttons for overcast lead track ‘Everyday’, matching an understated boom bap bump with sad-eyed synths and plaintive piano chords. What comes through is the balance between classic RnB reference points and subtle touches which give the music a necessary edge.
On ‘Falling Like Rain’ Lee Scott and Jack Chard play with the format a little more, finding a crooked lean in the dislocated beat without derailing the groove and creating a nervous energy with the vibrato quiver on the organ pad tone. Jane cuts through the mix as a spectral figure here, rolling out dreamy mantras and eschewing a chorus in favour of a snatched sample, and somewhere in the melancholy there’s an unlikely synergy with the heartbreak neo-soul of Bristol crew Jabu. An extra shout goes out to Sumgii, a heavyweight producer in this scene who slips in to lay down a bass guitar line.
Jane is just as adept at delivering a more direct kind of jam, too. ‘Up Above’ is a structured, rounded-out cut which shows off her range as she shifts octaves for a bittersweet reverie that could absolutely find a home on prime time radio. ‘With Ease’ is similarly smooth, not least thanks to the lilt of acoustic guitar at the front of the mix. But even here Jane’s voice comes bathed in reverb, which responds to her higher frequencies to create a seductive mist over the top of the track.
It’s refreshing how much restraint is exercised on these tracks. In a play-it-safe bid for popularity ‘With Ease’ should surely drop after the first intro bars, but a beat doesn’t land until the track’s final stretch and it’s a dusty, understated beat at that. While a pop mentality might be left thirsting, the end result is a release which holds you in a gentle embrace — a moment of respite which quite frankly everyone could do with pausing for at least once a day.
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