Oh No cover

Oh No

Released

Sometimes you need to work out your stresses the most productive way you know how: by channeling it through the expressive escape of pop, where a deceptively upbeat vibe can act more as a goal to strive for than a default state to revel in. And with her hyperpop-adjacent but comparatively austere sense of club-mode R&B/bass music hybridization — co-produced with the assistance of Junior Boys founding member Jeremy Greenspan — she’s assembled a set that expresses a collective-ready catharsis that’s best transmuted into dancefloor release. Maybe that leaves early impressions of lyrical-musical dissonance, or at least ironic juxtaposition. But that’s not as new a concept as the shift in dance-music scope that Lanza helms here, where her poly-genre freedom works because she’s got a voice made for all of them. The glowing electro-boogie of “VV Violence” coats a serrated knife with a layer of glittery candy paint over (“I’m working all day long/For the love I never see/Yeah I say it to your face/But it doesn’t mean a thing”), snapping from chirpy Ke$ha taunts to emotively pained freestyle. The downtempo synthpop throwback of “I Talk BB” floats between sparse Minneapolis Sound digi-funk and labelmate Cooly G’s post-dubstep soul, her falsetto threatening to crack but never wavering, even as she sings about wanting to avoid her lover’s eye contact. That face-to-face connection is found in “It Means I Love You,” which corrals the typically frenetic rhythms of juke through a sample of a South African Shangaan electro track that Lanza’s pitched-up voice turns into a declaration of love that hits like an ultimatum. Those are just a few highlights on a joyously frustration-venting club-pop classic of an album, Lanza emerging here as a versatile, evocative voice that finds herself by finding a lot of other selves.

Nate Patrin

Suggestions
Vertical XL cover

Vertical XL

Kingdom
BB/ANG3L cover

BB/ANG3L

Tinashe
ManMade cover

ManMade

Zo!
Stargazer cover

Stargazer

Carmen Rodgers
File Under UK Metaplasm cover

File Under UK Metaplasm

Rian Treanor
Love Apparatus cover

Love Apparatus

Jesse Boykins III
Underwater Dancehall cover

Underwater Dancehall

Pinch
War & Leisure cover

War & Leisure

Miguel
Return II Space cover

Return II Space

Digital Mystikz
Faith in Strangers cover

Faith in Strangers

Andy Stott
Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics cover

Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics

Adrian Younge, The Delfonics
Nostalgia, Ultra cover

Nostalgia, Ultra

Frank Ocean