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Saya Gray: Saya review – oddball heartbreak anthems bounce around pop history
There are some self-consciously experimental moments, but the Toronto musician’s genre-mashing songs of heartbreak are often focused and fresh
The Toronto producer and vocalist’s debut album proper can’t possibly live up to all this bluster but it is a thoroughly enjoyable ride: a set of elastic, translucent songs that draw equally from quirked-up TikTok music – think Kate Nash-style vocals, dreamy Frank Ocean production – as they do yacht rock, country and AOR. There’s a universality to Gray’s lyrics – which, on Saya, are generally about heartbreak – that feels particularly sturdy and comforting on a crisp, serene song like Thus Is Why. The more traditional songs here – Puddle and How Long Can You Keep Up a Lie in particular – place Gray in a lineage of sharp-tongued romantics, though their effect is blunted some by self-consciously “experimental” passages, like the percussive breakdown on Line Back 22 or the trap beats at the beginning of HBW and Exhaust the Topic, which feel drawn straight from a playbook titled Weird, But Not Too Weird, Things to Do on a Pop Album.
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