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Ravyn Lenae: Bird’s Eye review – a breathtaking R&B follow-up
The US singer-songwriter’s featherlight voice and distinctive lyrics skip easily between styles on her strikingly self-assured second album
The Chicago-born, LA-based artist’s 2022 debut, Hypnos, gestured at greatness, but its follow-up, Bird’s Eye, is the real deal: a breathtaking pop suite that’s fleet-footed but rock-solid in its convictions, easily swaying between styles while always foregrounding Lenae’s gossamer voice. She mainly writes about complicated relationships – the bread and butter of R&B – but there are quiet revelations to be found across the album: “I don’t know where to start/ Can’t say where I begin,” she sings on Pilot, “Just know I’m 24/ Small to the world I’m in.” On Dream Girl and Love Is Blind, she uses unusual images (“Running low on lemonade/ Crying over paper plates”) and dramatic turns of phrase (“We been driving all day/ And it’s taking over me”) that somehow make perfect sense in the context of the record.
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