Saya. Saya Gray (2)

A while back a packet of cds landed on my hallway carpet and one of them is a new record that I have kept playing since that day. As Erwin Zijleman had already reported on it, I had kept it aside, but after a while decided that I liked SAYA too much to ignore the album.

SAYA is a record that combines the old and the new. Some elements are totally new in sound, others sound like songs I've been playing for decades, while on top of it all in this amalgam of sounds, Saya Gray manages to rock a little as well.

Within the different songs on her first album the young singer-songwriter dares to vary a lot as well. Just listen to the difference between opening song '..Thus Is Why (I Don't Spring 4 Love)' and the second one 'Shell (Of A Man)'. Where the first is full of modern effects, in the second she sounds like an alternative  K.T. Tunstall from 2005 and allows country elements into the song to top things off. Song three 'Line Back 22' is once again a very electronic song, that mostly seems to come from a box, and then an electric guitar and a harp pop up. At the same time there are some Philly soul points of reference as well. You can expect that sense for adventure to continue all through the record. And yes, I have to get through some very modern sounding effects all through SAYA. It's more than worth it, I assure you.

As you will have noticed, modern pop heroes like Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Charlie XCX and what not have either totally passed me by or I do not like what I hear (enough to pursue). For Saya Gray that changed. I have no clue how she compares to the names I mentioned just now, so have nothing to add on the topic.

What I want to share, is that Saya Gray dares to experiment on her debut record. With sounds, by blending genres, lending familiar elements from a genre like country or famous 70s pop songs to incorporate into a total modern song. To play with her voice, providing all sorts of unexpected changes in her voice, that at times becomes another instrument in the whole by looping little vocal sounds.

Reading the bio on her Bandcamp page, she's incomparable to anyone else. I believe it, but there is a new artist who is just as unpredictable if not more so, Mei Semones. In their own way, they both do things that you do not see coming, while both presenting songs you just want to keep listening to.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght

 

You can listen to and order SAYA here:

https://sayagray.bandcamp.com/album/saya