To anyone on the blog or pod, it’s been hard to avoid my growing Saya Gray obsession. I chose her as my track of the year in BOTH 2023 and 2024 like a mad fool. But we are not, as of yet, talking about an artist who has broken out in any way into the mainstream, or indeed barely into the consciousness of the average 6Music listener.
So who is Saya Gray? A Japanese-Canadian musician who’s lived in Canada, Japan, and is currently (I believe) resident in London, she’s a virtuoso bass player (just watch a video of her playing bass, wow!) who for a long time has played in a series of other bands and set-ups. Slowly, in the meantime, she’s been stepping out as a solo artist and making a name for herself in the early 2020s.
Gray’s output up until has been hard to categorise. She has a magpie approach to soaking up different influences, and her songs bounce around in different zones in a way that perhaps detractors might find a bit exhausting. My TINH brothers have commented that it can feel like you’re listening to three songs at once on some of her output. But she also feels quite prolific, her debut ’19 Masters’ (was it an album? She didn’t seem to think it was, but it seemed like one to me!) in 2022 followed by two long EPs, Qwerty and Qwerty II, that both felt to me like mini albums. High in the mix are hard to fathom song titles and a CAPS LOCK throughout (“DIZZY PPL BECOME BLURRY” and “AA BOUQUET FOR YOUR 180 FACE”). Guy has mentioned how much the Caps Lock annoys him and I can see that, but for me, the obtuse song titles feel to me like they reflect Gray’s subtle, mysterious persona and the often complex emotions she’s trying to express.
So what drew me to Saya? Partly, it was the excitement of hearing something that felt so genuinely fresh. But beyond that, she has an extraordinary ability to harness a beautiful melody, even if it’s presented in a post-modern wrapper, and her lyrics are often stunningly good (“I bent over backwards so many times/ I turned into a golden arch for you to walk through”). Beyond that – and this is really crucial into whether you’ll buy her vibe or not – is for me that this is an artist who in completely devoted and genuine about expressing who she is. She doesn’t yet have a giant global fanbase, but it is a madly devoted one that is pretty obsessive about her.
Her work up to this point has felt quite disparate and experimental – even down to the album titles like 19 MASTERS (named because that was written on the tape of her recordings that she had to battle a former record company to release) or QWERTY, reflecting the randomness of those letters together on a keyboard. Even fans such as myself would acknowledge that Gray has not tried to make a ‘coherent’ record – she’s gone with her gut and it makes her work up to this record thrilling but uneven.
This album is her move to change all of that. She talks of being on a road trip and consciously writing songs for an ‘album’, a coherent piece of work that makes sense as a collection of songs. And there is no doubt that, right from the slow-burn, stunning opener THUS IS WHY (I DON’T SPRING FOR LOVE) (yes, I know, the title, the title!), this album has a musical coherence and vision that her previous work has lacked.
Firstly, let’s be clear: this is an album about heartbreak. Songs about the death of a relationship (EXHAUST THE TOPIC and SHELL OF A MAN), the ache of love loss (HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP UP A LIE?) and feeling used (PUDDLE OF ME) run through this record like a stick of record. Musically, perhaps the most surprising thing about it is that it has, like so many things at the mo, a TOUCH OF COUNTRY! Slide guitar and acoustic pickings feature more prominently that in the past, and there’s a fascinating sense that Gray is pulling on a few more ‘classic’ influences – Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney – than we’ve heard from her work in the past.
That isn’t to say that she’s lost her experimental edge. Amongst all the mellow Beatles-esque Mellotrons and nice guitars are glitchy breakdowns, tempo shifts and odd segues: all the stuff that I think makes Guy struggle to love her ;-). She’s also a magpie with her own work, reusing old lyrics that call back to her earlier songs in a way that I absolutely love (“I can make your dust turn to sparkles’ from Preying Mantis, now re-used in Lie Down). But undeniably, she is writing verses and choruses. This is, for wont of a better phrase, a ‘proper album’. Perhaps she wants this to be her ‘debut’ because nothing she’s done before has felt like an album. It certainly feels like one to listen to.
So what did I make when I first heard? Actually, I wasn’t sure. My expectations were so sky-high, I was slightly blindsided by what I (iniitally, and wrongly!) felt was a bit more of a conventional album than I was expecting. Repeated listens – and fuck me, have there been a lot of those – have totally dismantled that view. This is an absolutely stunning record, and the thing that is most stunning about it is that there at least 5 or 6 of my fave Saya Gray songs of all time on it. That is how strong I think the songs are. The pretty, accessible opener THIS IS WHY… that turns into a proper guitar groove (the most Canadian lyrics of all time: “This is why I don’t fall in love in Spring/Hello snow, I’m alone”!); beautiful use of heartbreak glitchy autotune vocal on HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP UP A LIE; the party country, party Beatles-esque gorgeousness of SHELL OF A MAN, the absolute fucking STUNNER of bleak genius that is penultimate track EXHAUST THE TOPIC, and then the somehow redemptive and contemplative LIE DOWN, as good an album closer ad I’ve heard in a very long time.
For those who haven’t quite connected with her, I think her recent stunning Tiny Desk concert does a great job of stripping back her songs to their essence, and you can see their beauty on their own without any bells or whistles. But as for this album, I honestly have no idea of a) whether she’ll probably break out to a wider audience or remain cult and b) what the hell my TINH will make of this album.
For me, I’m enjoying the rare experience of an artist with which I’m genuinely obsessed not just delivering but completely surpassing my expectations. For the avoidance of doubt, this is my album of the year so far (sorry Weather Station, your crown has been stolen) and it will take something obscenely good to get anywhere near it.
thisisnothappening.net 