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 
Background stuff.
Let’s talk about the actual album.
In conclusion;
Well. This has been quite the journey. Which should surprise none of you.
I have already been a bit all over the place with Saya Gray, ever since I first had a single come to us courtesy of David. But at least on this album it goes from downright confusion and questioning, much more to appreciation. At times. But I just can’t fully settle with her music, and I am not sure I ever truly will.
Cards on the table here: Firstly, I think Saya Gray is a brilliant musician, singer and songwriter who makes interesting, individual pop music that pushes at the expected and plays with genres. Yes, the latter – as Joey says – is almost a given these days in an era when everyone has access to everything. Perhaps being more faithful to a genre and its forms is more unconventional than playing with them!
But…. and there was always going to be a but here… when you push boundaries and play with expectations, there’s always a risk it’ll create a sharper line where you’ll either fall one side or other. And this is the context for how I approach this album: from the beginning I have found my starting point is often the wrong side of the dividing line. From my first run of ‘Annie, Pick A Flower’ (sorry Saya, I will not be resorting to caps lock here; we can come back to that later), something didn’t quite feel right. Instead of enjoying the shimmering art-pop of it all, I seemed to just focus on the bits that grated. It’s not the 3-songs-in-one element (hi, Sudan archives, Steve Lacy, and many more), but more the feeling that there was a beautiful song trying to get out from within the reverb, vocal effects and genre switches. It felt somehow less than the sum of its parts, which was disappointing for someone with such clear talent and attraction.
Sadly, the second single – let’s call it AA – grated even more. The clicks, the yelps, the forced (imo) busyness, like it was trying to be a bit too clever when, really it was such a good song at its core, it didn’t need it. It’s not the style – I loved Radiohead clicking their way through Kid A and Amnesiac – and the vocal effects, while doing something different, felt slathered on for effect and I couldn’t rid myself of these reactions when I approached Saya.
And the thing is, for so much of it, it’s a really fantastic, enjoyable album. The opening and closing tracks are two of the best on the record. Country feels run through the whole thing, with the steel/slide guitars, the plucked notes, and it’s an angle I didn’t see coming. It really does work. It’s just from ‘Shell (Of A Man)’ that things start to disintegrate for me. It’s a barnstormer of a track, with Gray’s withering warning to a partner that they’re better off apart. It’s the other grand theme that dominates the record: heartbreak, anguish, bitterness, anger, desolation, and in the end, resignation and moving on. While it is laid on relentlessly thick as a theme, she really does do emotional collapse in such enticing forms.
But here’s the thing. Shell has these yelps, that…. i don’t know, they just poke me in the eye. The more I listen, the more I just don’t understand why they are there. It’s like they’ve been created to irritate me. When really, removing them would do nothing retrograde to the song. ‘Line Back 22’ is a floaty, semi-ballad, which seems to willfully transform into a James Blake/FKA Twigs-Lite at the end, in a baffling section that seems to scream “LOOK, I AM TELLING YOU THAT I AM AN INVENTIVE ARTIST” (have some caps lock back, perhaps). When really this sort of ham-fisted move just isn’t needed. The songs are easily good enough without it clouding things.
‘Puddle’ is just a brilliant, subtle pop song, until the yelps come back. But I do need someone to explain what they add to the track. They are like wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I’m QUIRKY’. Because, once again, I find a fantastic song pockmarked with what feels (to me) like needless over-invention. Because these really are brilliant so much of the time.
The withering ‘How Long’ really works. The effects splitting up the energy and emotion between the verse and chorus, but flows into ‘Cat’s Cradle’ with its sub-Radiohead AI speech and for what purpose…. I just feel like I’m not in on the cool kid’s conversation. Because it tees up ’10 Ways’ which is another fantastic track. ‘HBW’ also – despite beats that would usually give me hives – packs real punch, and the second half of the album finishes so much more strongly than the album. ‘Exhaust’ is a guitar-led lament, that doesn’t really need its riff-fest at the end, and it closes with the best track on the album. Lie Down is they Saya I want to hear. Sleek, full of emotion, and the classiest of Americana-tinged pop. One of the best tracks I’ve heard so far this year.
Ok, so you probably feel like I’m being very much over the top. I probably am. I often am. I don’t tend to get stuck in the middle ground.
But watch the Tiny Desk concert she did (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQBuO2yWsFQ) which was just beautiful. A stripped-back trip with 3 of the album’s best tracks on it, and a revelation to me. I was hearing how the songs worked. Saya’s voice is pure, delicate, and carries all the songs so well. But rather than making me go back and listen to Saya in a new way, I found myself wanting to listen to Tiny Desk more than the album. In reality, there’s a middle ground somewhere here, as I think some of the effects and instrumentation and inventiveness is really impressive. But in the end, it just feels like it’s been applied in too many layers, and at times the majesty of her talent is lost in a bit of a desperate grab for the more avant-garde when perhaps making perfect, modern pop would just be too vanilla.
There are times when I am listening to Saya when I think it’s amazing, but each time it’s torpedoed by so many little actions that I never hear it how I wish I could. It’s a massive shame, because she’s such a talent, with her brother Lucian an integral part of a really great band. But I can’t help feeling that not every single effect, click, yelp, reverb or outro needed to be done. I’ve honestly listened to the album 30 or more times. I’ve taken breaks. I’ve cooked to it. I’ve reversed the order. I’ve done headphones and background, and I feel like I’m stuck in a sad, disappointing rut with it. So near, and yet so far.
Or of course, I’m an idiot and I just can’t appreciate it for what it is.
The pod awaits….
A lot has been said already about her and this album, so I’ll keep this short. I’ve always been puzzled by her and her music. As much as there has been brilliance I have also found her all over the shop and I was very concerned about this album….. and I was wrong. This may be one of the best albums we have reviewed in recent years.
These are the notes from my phone over the last month of listening.
– The first and last songs on this album are perfect book ends. In fact the entire album flow is perfect.
– Initially I thought there is less chaos and aghast across this album compared with what we’ve been listening to. When you dive into it, there isn’t. She’s getting better at incorporating it into her music.
– This Is Why – what a great flow. Her vocals come into their own on this track. I would love to hear an acoustic version of this.
– Shell – I think this is my favourite song she’s made… E-V-A.
– 10 Ways To Loose Your Crown – this is a highlight also.
– HBW – this track is epic. It should be in a movie with the hero walking towards you and a something (car, building, gas station) blowing up behind them.
– Line Back 22 – love the ‘you lost sight of me’ vocals
– This album is so good I’m not sure if I want to see her live (don’t meet your heroes vibes).