Pull My Hair Back
Jessy Lanza's debut album ‘Pull My Hair Back’, co-written and co-produced with Jeremy Greenspan from Junior Boys, is a 2013 flagship for what electronic pop could sound like, stripped of bloated, behaviourist impulses that treat listeners like lab rats. It's graceful and erotic without the gratuitous close ups, icey and sensual, sweet without rotting your teeth, emotional but with enough blue glow to pull your heart strings. Jessy's voice flutters through the synths seductively, insistent without the over -singing and grating choruses that plague so much contemporary pop. Jessy Lanza has a background as a singer and skilled piano scholar, and the duo share a mutual love of collecting the old hardware synths and drum machines that grace this collection of songs. Transecting R&B, house, disco and 80s studio rock, the production is immaculate, reminiscent of early Junior Boys, treading that fine line between cold futurism and the R&B that Jessy and Jeremy are infatuated with. ‘Pull My Hair Back’ opens with the bouncy, acidic bassline, plaintive piano and shimmering, delay effected vocals of ‘Giddy’. The ominous pitched down introduction of ‘5785021’ gives way swiftly to a juddering pulse, insistent lyrics, bustling hi-hats and citric, crystalline synths. ‘Kathy Lee’ is a minimal, smouldering slow jam illuminated by smudged water colour keys, which switches into double time syncopation in the closing stretch, the song begging as many questions as it answers. Jessy's vocals sound comfortably at home over the fluttering-pitched synths of ‘Fuck Diamond’ and the album's pop pinnacle, ‘Keep Moving’, where the tempo rises into classic disco, house and techno. ‘Against The Wall’ marches in with crunchy, metallic drums and a bumbling baseline, as the singers sweet, delayed voice rides a line through powerfully contrasting gurgling, strobing synths. The album's title track stutters in with carefree, implied S&M directives and sour splashes under an ultraviolet glow. ‘As If’ throws a curve ball as its rolling, martial snares and walking bassline climax in a sour, acidic crescendo. And the album rounds off gracefully with the flood of endorphins of ‘Strange Emotion’. ‘Pull My Hair Back’ is bittersweet, blue and soulful, shot through with driving, fizzling arpeggios. It balances cold, machine tooled precision with Jessy's beguiling, elevated vocals and her more intuitive, impressionistic keyboard playing. Lean and deadly, it leaves you craving more.
Review
“Connected through mutual acquaintances, Jessy Lanza was sought by Jeremy Greenspan to contribute background vocals for Junior Boys' It's All True. Greenspan reciprocated by helping Lanza, a music teacher who studied jazz performance and piano, get her head around a bank of synthesizers and drum machines inherited from her father. The pair's time together developed into a recording collaboration that resulted in Pull My Hair Back, Lanza's Hyperdub debut. Two months prior to its release, she appeared on labelmate Ikonika's "Beach Mode,” in which she provided a wispy and melismatic but slightly cutting lead. That approach continues all the way through this brief, mostly subdued, sonically rich set. Lanza cites electronic R&B wiz Kashif – forebear to the likes of Timbaland, the Neptunes, and the-Dream – as a favorite, and she admires Evelyn King, one of that producer's beneficiaries, but she never aspires to that range and rarely breaks a sweat. Sweetly remote with an assertive and nonchalantly explicit streak, Lanza takes more from the breathier phrasings of Mariah Carey and Aaliyah and occasionally resembles an ecstatic version of the xx's Romy Madley Croft. It's easy to imagine Greenspan singing most of the leads. The productions, like many Junior Boys tracks, are pared down, supple, dimly lit – full of cushiony beats, rippling synthesizers, clicking/rattling percussion, and liberal use of reverb. It's a variation on the JBs' dubbed-out compound of synth pop and post-disco, and it suits Lanza's voice to enticing effect." Andy Kellman – Allmusic Guide