Jessy Lanza: Face
The Hamilton electro-popster's new cut features skittery beats, burbling synths and fluid vocals.
By Kerry Doole
Jessy Lanza - Face (Hyperdub): This Hamilton-based synth-pop/electronica artist has yet to break commercially in her home country, but she has had domestic and international critics salivating over her earlier work. That started with her 2013 debut album Pull My Hair Back, shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, and continued with 2016's Oh No, which had The Guardian praising her "smoky sensuality” and “distinct, vapour-light voice,”
The release date of a new album, All The Time, has been pushed back to July 24, but this second advance track sure whets the appetite. It features Lanza's vocals sitting neatly amidst skittery beats and burbling synths.
Lanza's inspiration for Face came from watching people’s faces on the New York subway. “I was fantasizing about what everyone was thinking based on their expressions,” she says in a press release. “I found myself projecting my own feelings onto the strangers I was looking at. I went home and wrote the lyrics imagining that the commuters were having telepathic conversations with each other. The questions I imagined them asking each other oscillated from sexual to confrontational: ‘Baby is it just enough? Tell me do you want it all? Baby, are you feeling tough? Feeling tougher more than not?’”
Lanza sent the vocals and drum and bass patterns of the song to her songwriting partner Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) who added lush synth pads and co-produced the track.
The accompanying video was directed by Winston Case and filmed during the pair's travels across the States as pandemic lockdown took hold. "We just used our immediate surroundings and a couple of lights Winston managed to fit in the van," says Lanza.
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PR: Kim Juneja, Take Aim
