Jessy Lanza moves into the spotlight
Hamilton artist behind acclaimed electronic albums is still getting comfortable onstage
“I really had no idea whatsoever what we were doing.”
So confesses Jessy Lanza of the tentative creative process that birthed her enormously acclaimed 2013 debut album Pull My Hair Back — a process that, all things considered, worked out pretty well, given the rave reviews that piled up behind the record in pretty much every high-profile international outlet you can name. It eventually wound its way to a perch alongside the likes of Drake, Arcade Fire and Tanya Tagaq on the 2014 Polaris Music Prize short list. One could definitely do worse for a first try.
Going from “complete unknown” to electro-R&B “it”-girl more or less overnight didn’t quite leave the self-effacing Lanza armour-plated with self-confidence when she headed into the studio to record this year’s superior second album, Oh No, but it did at least mean a lot less “stumbling around” in search of a vision.
The Hamilton singer/producer, collaborating for a second time with partner and kindred synth-pop spirit Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys, and enlisting enigmatic Toronto techno treasure David “Egyptrixx” Psutka as mixer, was dead set on making “a poppier record” than the elusive, minimalist Pull My Hair Back. She knew what she wanted that record to be going in, right down to the title. Which, she notes, “is not typical — I usually name things last and it’s kind of a struggle.”
“On the first record, there was a lot of trial-and-error. There were a lot of songs that Jeremy and I worked on that never ended up on the record that we sent out to people to see if anybody would be interested in releasing them and, like, nobody gave a s--- about them because they were bad songs,” says Lanza forthrightly.
“They were s---ty. Which is fine, but we had to purge a lot of material to get to that point. So with Oh No, I felt a lot more confident. I also had this moment where I started thinking ‘What if everybody hates this and nobody likes it? I’m not gonna have a career anymore’ and blah, blah, blah.”
“I just started thinking all these really negative things. But then I had this moment of clarity where I was just, like: ‘I don’t really give a s---. I’m gonna keep on working on music regardless and it’s all gonna be fine. I might as well just do what I want.’ ”
Once again, it’s all worked out pretty well for Lanza. Oh No — released this past May through U.K. label Hyperdub, sometime home to Flying Lotus, the Bug and Zomby — offers a richer, slightly less skeletal extension of Pull My Hair Back’s exploratory adventures in fusing old-school house and techno rhythm and texture with the sensual swagger of futuristic R&B as imagined by the likes of Prince and Timbaland. Once again it’s been a full-time job keeping up with the breathless critical notices.
Lanza will consequently be on the road on both sides of the Atlantic well into the fall after her gig at Lee’s Palace this coming Friday. She’s still a tad ill at ease in the spotlight, she admits, but she’s learning. And having drummer Tori Tizzard (of ferocious Hamilton outfit WTCHS) to shore up what was previously a onewoman show doesn’t hurt.
“It’s great having her energy up there,” Lanza says. “It was all very pleasant, being able to quit my day job and play shows. But it was all very unexpected . . . I definitely don’t feel comfortable. I need my stuff. I toyed with the idea of getting rid of a lot of my gear that I was playing onstage and really focusing on singing, and then I just came to the realization that that’s just not me and I’m not comfortable if I don’t have my keyboards and stuff to play.”