Liv.e’s Interstellar R&B Odyssey

“I’M FINALLY in a place to talk my shit,” R&B innovator Liv.e recently told Rolling Stone. It’s good shit. Olivia Williams was raised in a musical family in Texas, singing in church as a kid. Her sophomore album, Girl in the Half Pearl, is a fully formed artistic breakthrough, swerving from drum-and-bass to bleary soul to sensual, spacey confessional jams. The overall sound can be summed up by the title of one of the LP’s most enveloping tunes: “Lake Psilocybin.” Liv.e uses her wide-open inner space to map out messy romantic states and multileveled internal crisis, luxuriating in a self-discovery that seems to be eternally unfolding.