Recorded shortly before her move from New York to San Francisco, the Canadian club-pop musician’s third LP with Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan sounds sensual, understated, and effortless.
Jessy Lanza’s music sits just at the fringe between club and pop. Her airy, embodied techno is mild and frisky as a spring day, effortlessly stylish and ever so slightly aloof. With a high, breathy vocal pop style indebted to Janet Jackson, she’s an electronic producer whose approach alights on the clubbier side of experimental R&B. All the Time, her third full-length collaboration with creative partner Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys, rewards careful attention to the subtleties of a consistent sound. It lacks the muscularity of tracks like “5785021,” or the footwork edge of “It Means I Love You”; instead, its sunny swells and sanded edges recall the wistful electro-pop of Empress Of, or Robyn’s Honey. The golden glow feels easy to attribute to Lanza’s recent relocation to the Bay Area, even though the record was nearly finished by the time she left New York in March.
All the Time is a sound Lanza does well already, and it looks effortless. “Face” plays with breakbeats; “Like Fire” rolls out little siren peals of synth most immediately familiar from Jamie xx’s “Gosh.” “Alexander” and “Baby Love” swoon towards R&B, backed by a sublayer of synth that’s only intermittently interested in moving in the same direction. The opening “Anyone Around” feels deeper in conversation with hip-hop than Lanza’s previous work, and there’s a little deconstructed trap in its loud 808 claps, clattering hi-hats, and pavement-shaking bass. But once the melody comes in, her own aesthetic agenda is clear: curious squeals of modular synth to match the half-articulated question of the title, background coos that underline self-aware vulnerability.
More often than not, a Jessy Lanza song is also a sexy mood. Lanza’s songs—the title track of her 2013 debut, Pull My Hair Back; this album’s “Badly” and “Ice Creamy”—are full of understated gestures that sit just a notch beneath actively drawing attention to themselves. All the Time is full of pleas like “want ya, want ya” and “I do want you badly”; even more innocent refrains, like “over and over” or a whispered “do it baby, do it baby,” sound like variations on a theme. “I can’t deal without your love—and I really, really tried,” she confesses on “Over and Over,” with direct-to-the-camera, speak-sing sincerity. And “Like Fire,” which seems obviously sexy on its surface (“You know that I want your love/You know that I’m serious”), gradually reveals anger at unrequited desire: “You’re always holding out/All your cars and diamond rings/I can only blame myself/You burn me like fire.”
Though it’s a hard balance to strike, Lanza’s work is sensual, never titillating or ridiculous, which opens space to address other topics at the same time. She describes “Anyone Around” as inspired by the social isolation of moving from her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, to New York City; “Face” began as a series of imaginary conversations between fellow subway riders. There is a sensuality inherent to this kind of craving for human contact, too. The sprightly single “Lick in Heaven” Lanza identifies as an expression of “cynicism”—particularly its video, in which she wears a magenta power suit and leads a business-casual dance party on the set of a morning talk show. It’s a simple concept with the brightly lit look of the small screen, and a subtler commentary on the environments and aesthetics of “women’s” media, with its many tacit boundaries and scripted models of authenticity.
But Lanza’s formula is simple, suggesting heavy emotions with few words and a light touch. Her muffled club bass, choppy vocal fills, and pitched-down, masculine-sounding gulps all feel like the work of humans, not machines. All the Time is sincere so it doesn’t have to be deep—merely an invitation to look beneath the surface.
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