on the pulse - 2022 - #13 - tate mcrae, kehlani, ella mai, lucky daye, ravyn lenae, yeule

So this is a bit of a detour: I’ve done my all-rap and all-country episodes of this series, but I’ve wanted to do a bit of a catch-up on a lot of pop and R&B releases… and what I’ve discovered is a lot of frustrating inconsistency and not nearly as much greatness as I was hoping. Well, we can’t get everything that we want, and this knocks off a lot before the midyear, let’s get On The Pulse!

yeule - Glitch Princess - So this is an album I’ve been hearing about since the beginning of the year and I did really want to get to it at some point - yeule is a London singer-songwriter-producer who broke onto the scene with Serotonin II in 2019, a really blissful slice of ambient pop and chillwave that I found myself liking a lot more than I thought I would; the textures and vibes were just immaculate. I was a bit more concerned with this album, given that along the way they had picked up production credits from Danny L Harle and an expanded team of engineers, and were reportedly disrupting that vibe with some glitch and hyperpop - as well as an ambient piece that runs over four and a half hours, I checked it out, it was pretty decent if not impressive or groundbreaking by ambient standards - but hey, the core is still here, I had some expectations this time around. And as a result, the album is still pretty good, but in swapping in a lot of crunchy, scattershot glitch over the synths that flit between hazy ambient and bleeping chillwave, it leads to a project that feels more immediate but not always making the most of it, especially if you’re expecting stronger hooks to come as a result. Instead, the glitch is more texture echoing yeule’s painful introspection, a shuddering textural experience as they peel through body dysmorphia, loneliness, depression, self-harm, and unrequited love, where it often feels so intimate that the inclusion of Danny L Harle’s glossy but blown out, pitch-shifting bombast feels both unnecessary and a little out of place; yeule could have easily handled this on their own and this album would have likely been better for it, especially as the vocal mixing feels unnecessarily contorted and compressed even before he adds the chipmunk filters. Hell, they make a jangling acoustic song with ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Your Beauty’ and its brand of tortured love feels tactile in a way hyperpop gloss wouldn’t flatter, as do a lot of yeule’s experiments with guitars like on ‘Flowers Are Dead’ and the sizzling swell of ‘Fragments’ and ‘I ♡ U’. Now Danny L Harle’s production does make songs like ‘Perfect Blue’ pick up a certain glazed tragedy as the guest star Tohji can’t pick up on their pain, but I’m not convinced it always works with the chirpy bounce of ‘Too Dead Inside’ and ‘Bites On My Neck’ even if they might fit as overcompressed upbeat bangers. And it’s intriguing to draw a parallel to, say, the most Alice Glass album, where she had more focused compositions amidst the glitch but messier framing in confronting abuse, whereas yeule tends to fold in towards themselves, which might make for weaker hooks all around, but a more tangled, painful internal journey where the lack of a clear resolution is part of the point. As such, I’d struggle to call this precisely great, but it was an intriguing listen; definitely worth going back to hear, check it out.

Ravyn Lenae - HYPNOS - This is one of those debuts that feels pretty damn hyped, mostly built of a solid run of EPs throughout the latter half of the 2010s and touring with SZA and Noname - if that’s not a way to get me in the door to check out your sound, I’m not sure what is, especially as the critical acclaim came hot and fast for this debut. And… well, it’s one of those cases where from performance alone I understand why this would attract a lot of attention, but I’m not entirely convinced there’s more to follow through. Because let’s make this clear, Ravyn Lenae is a gorgeous singer: hushed, sensual, with layered cooing that flirts with the baby voice, but doesn’t bother me as much because, just as importantly, she’s produced to emphasize the full extent of her range and maintain that sense of intimacy, nestled perfectly into the mix. The extremely obvious comparison is Aaliyah, who I actually never quite got into in the early 2000s before she passed but given the current retro wave would be an easy win to replicate - you can certainly hear echoes in the melodies - but Ravyn Lenae’s sonic palette feels more textured and contemporary; there’s touches of Solange’s ethereal but soulful side here as well which adds a lot of organic flavour. Yeah, the fluttery acoustic guitars, hints of strings, and gentle patter of textured percussion to underscore the firm basslines is here, but there’s also this slightly alien synth murmur that adds a steamy humidity to a lot of songs - sometimes it can feel a bit jerky and staccato like on ‘Venom’, where the wonkiness doesn’t help the warmth or groove, but that’s the exception, not the rule, as songs like the dreamy ‘Lullabye prove in spades; frankly, if I’m going to nitpick anywhere it’d probably come with the percussion feeling too programmed where a live, jazzy patter or more pulls from Afrobeat would be a natural fit, like ‘M.I.A.’ or ‘Xtasy’ produced by Kaytranada, especially in comparison to any trap digressions like the leaden bass on ‘3D’ with Smino! But it’s all built to set up a subtle, luxuriant experience where the spare melodies weave around the cycling grooves, just so blissful… and then after fifty minutes pass, you realize with a jolt that the album is over and you haven’t really remembered much of it. Which, sure, if you’ve gone under hypnosis at any point it’s familiar - hence the album title - but it also means it washes over you without much in the way of standout hooks or turns of phrase that might catch more attention; if I compare to a project like Jhene Aiko’s 2017 album Trip, that same sprawling dreaminess is there, but there was a presence and core of storytelling that Ravyn Lenae seems to shy away from; the writing here is more deflective. And while that can create some mystique and allure, and it makes sense in the soft-focus contemplation of Ravyn Lenae trying to find herself on cuts like ‘Inside Out’ and ‘Deep In The World’, both within and without relationships, it can also feel flighty, more reliant on vibes where you’d expect the poetry to pick up more layers but winds up feeling a little too conventional for its own good - and that’s not counting the ‘breakup’ song moments like ‘Mercury’ where selling something more confrontational is not in her wheelhouse. Don’t get me wrong, this is a promising debut with a lot of style and texture that I definitely enjoyed, but it’s lightweight and I’m not sure it has a lot of sticking power, even with the songs that capture more of a hook - very good, not quite great.

Lucky Daye - Candydrip - Full disclosure, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to talk about Lucky Daye for a decent bit: he’s one of those R&B insiders that if you read liner notes you’ll see his name occasionally pop up as a cowriter, but in the late 2010s he started working to build his own R&B career… and it was a little slow-going, especially as I found his debut Painted to not quite click, mostly thanks to the production. Thankfully his 2021 EP Table For Two really put him back in my good graces - it’s a great little EP with a lot of nice guests, definitely go dig it up - and with ‘Over’ getting a little chart attention, I wanted to give the album proper a chance. And it was worth it, but the more listens I gave Candydrip, the more I couldn’t escape the feeling that Lucky Daye was missing something to put this in the same tier as Table For Two with its high-concept flair and impeccable balance. Some of it might be Lucky Daye himself - he plays into the easy-going charisma of the Casanova type with a little more frustrated angst to add a bit of tension alongside the fun horny vibes, but he doesn’t have the effortless magnetism of Usher, the high-minded drama of Frank Ocean, or even the textural flair and humour of Anderson .Paak. It’s hard to escape the feeling that he’s still searching for a unique voice outside of the shadow of his influences - and I’m not really a fan of his falsetto on songs like ‘Feels Like’ and ‘Compassion’ with Chiiild - and for as much as the instrumentation flits across buttery R&B, liquid funk, and even reasonably well-produced trap that can’t help but feel out of place, his foundation feels slippery. It’s strange because D’Mile handles the majority of the production across the album and does a really solid job in how he balances live percussion and drum machines, thick supple basslines, liquid guitar and keyboard textures, and even how Lucky Daye bends his vocals - seriously, between this and Silk Sonic, D’Mile should get a lot more work - but it creates the impression of Lucky Daye as a bit of a shapeshifter, where he could write for anyone with a lot of competence to make good songs, but hasn’t fully formed his own presence to knock his own best songs out of the park. Granted, some of that seems to be an issue with the lyrics - putting aside the moments that just feel slightly silly like around any of the food references, my larger problem is that the scenes being painted feel bare-bones in their sensual imagery, or don’t set enough of a stage. There’s a lot of conflicted back-and-forth scenes implied like on ‘Guess’ and ‘Over’ and the gorgeous ‘Used To Be’ - which did grow me, as expected - but if you’re trying to delve into the roots or any deeper introspection beyond the sex, it’s just not as layered as Table For Two was, although I will give credit for a really damn strong ending run of songs from ‘Used To Be’ to ‘Ego’ where he does open up and highlight how his ego likely contributed to this instability and he’s hoping she’ll stick around as he does the work of repair. But when you have a long, languid runtime that absolutely does not justify its length, it’s an easy album to slip on if you want to cultivate a very specific vibe… but I’d struggle to say it has a ton of replay outside of that. Really good stuff, but I was hoping for a bit more.

Ella Mai - Heart On My Sleeve - I’m a little surprised that I was looking forward to this project, mostly because I did not really care for Ella Mai’s debut that much; it wasn’t bad, but I don’t remember being all that impressed by anything on the project, from Ella Mai as a singer to Mustard’s production to any of the writing; I just took the absolutely excellent closing piano ballad ‘Easy’ and moved on. And it seemed like outside of specifically R&B, everyone else did too - it’s been four years since the debut, Ella Mai hasn’t been seen on the Hot 100 since, and it left wondering where the hell she’d even go for a sophomore album… and I get why, because this feels like a lateral move at best, and somehow I wind up disappointed. And while a lot of this album falls apart for plenty of the same reasons that her debut did, we have to start with the element that pretty much cripples this album out of the gate: the vocal production is godawful. For a singer who isn’t precisely a powerhouse like Ella Mai, it might make sense to place her closer to the front of the mix, but it makes no sense to give her a vocal pickup that sounds so canned, manipulated, and poorly mastered, less for stylistic flair and more because Mustard’s production team doesn’t seem to have any faith in her ability to carry a track on raw talent. And sure, Mustard has done this to certain R&B artists in the mid-2010s, but when you get guest stars who do sound more organic with their pickups, it makes me question why they chose to do it, especially as it only serves to make this album feel more anonymous. Granted, the larger problem is that I’m struggling to find much of a unique personality that Ella Mai even brings to the table here - on another album that feels unnecessarily bloated, we have a lot of overweight bassy tremors supporting percussion pulled between 2014 snap beats and cheap-sounding trap percussion, and precious little instrumental melody that often feels swallowed and contorted in watery layers where it’s clear Ella Mai are supposed to be the primary focal point to drive the songs… not a good sign when the vocals are so compromised! This also doesn’t help any hooks really pop, and minus much in the way of distinctive songwriting - Ella Mai once again is one of the most indecisive and passive figures in mainstream R&B and she’s not especially poetic or innovative or transgressive in expressing her feelings - thus I find myself looking for the moments that come close to pulling free of the oily murk, mostly when we get any hints of strings or any producer besides Mustard takes the lead. So with that… I liked the patient sentiments behind ‘Trying’ with the strings that later ramps into the more melodramatic ‘Pieces’ that has one of the better hooks here, there’s a cool Alexander O’Neil flip on ‘Break My Heart’, ‘Feels Like’ is a nice swaggering deep cut that I’m surprised Ella Mai could pull off, and she does have a knack for closers with ‘Fading Out’ being pretty nice… but are they enough to get over the goopy messes of ‘Leave You Alone’, or ‘How’ with Roddy Ricch, or the grainy headache of ‘Didn’t Say’ with Latto? Unfortunately, it leaves me with the impression that even if Ella Mai had another breakthrough here, nobody around her is capitalizing on it effectively, and this long-delayed sophomore album only seems to confirm it. I was never a big fan to begin with, but even considering that… mediocre at best.

Kehlani - Blue Water Road - The last time I reviewed Kehlani, I found myself very frustrated with them - or even less them and more the fact that the label didn’t seem to have a clear idea where the hell to push their sound. They’re a pretty damn good writer and performer and they have good instincts to where you’d expect they’d be bigger… but on both SweetSexySavage and It Was Good Until It Wasn’t I thought the production let them down. So when I starting hearing that this was their best to date with more breezy and ethereal production for support, I was pretty skeptical… and while I do think this is generally a more consistent project that her last two, I still think it’s not matching the potential that Kehlani can deliver. And it’s the production letting them down, most of which I’m going to blame on Pop Wansel, member of the perpetually mediocre production duo Pop & Oak - not only is the vocal production overly compressed and wildly inconsistent song to song depending on who produces and engineers it, with Kuk Harrell being the worst offender here in how he smothers Kehlani’s vocals, even when it comes to being placed or layered in the mix, but we’re also stuck with these watery, weedy guitars alongside lumbering percussion that you’d like to think would build to more of a lush, languid mix alongside the strings and horns, or at least stronger hooks… and they just don’t, outside of maybe ‘altar’, ‘melt’, or ‘get me started’ with Syd that I’m frankly convinced cowriter Ravyn Lenae could have done more with on her debut! Funnily enough when Kehlani gets a few pop- and hip-hop-leaning songs with a little more swagger and bounce like the sandy ‘wish i never’ or the groovy patter of ‘up at night’ with Justin Bieber of all people, not only are their flows better, but they’re reasonably sticky, which highlights the weird dichotomy of this album, where it wants to be this fluid, atmospheric and gorgeous exploration but it keeps forcing a vibe rather than letting it develop naturally. And I wish the lyrics could make up for more of this: Kehlani’s playful brand of sexual provocation has always had a lot of charm and embracing a lot more of their lesbian side is a nice touch, especially as they’ll paint more complications, like their regrets and mistakes on ‘little story’, or the exasperation on ‘wish i never’, or the more outright sensual cuts like ‘altar’ and ‘melt’ and ‘get me started’, the last coming with some good uncertainty and give-and-take. But then there’s ‘more than i should’, where even if you’re playing morally ambiguous and it might make sense in context with Kehlani’s misadventures and miscommuncations, the attempted justifications for cheating feel really flimsy; if it’s not working, end it and move on, you’ve proven able to do it on other songs on this album! And with the ending feeling mostly inconclusive - yes, the journey is ongoing but not much of an arc has taken place beyond learning to give in to love, which can feel a bit thin especially with Kehlani’s blunter lyricism - what we’ve got is probably Kehlani’s best album, certainly their most consistent, but one that falls short yet again of what it could be if the production was remotely competent, especially as there’s no song here that matches ‘Change Your Life’. I’m inclined to recommend it because I do want Kehlani to get some proper label attention so they don’t have to work with Pop & Oak… but we’re also three albums in; at some point, it shouldn’t be this hard.

Tate McRae - i used to think i could fly - There’s a part of me that feels bad for Tate McRae - she’s not even twenty yet and already she’s gone through the twin hellish ringers of reality tv and teen popstardom, where in the latter case you can tell that she has something of an artistic voice that’s getting engulfed by her label wanting her to recreate more successful acts, be they Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo. That had significantly worried about this debut album, especially as the buzz was suggesting this was far closer to the already dated monotony of songs like ‘you broke me first’ than any attempts at something more vibrant ‘she’s all I wanna be’. And… let me start by saying that there’s a market for music like this: Tate McRae sounds like the sort of shy, insecure teenager who is more often caught in the swirl of emotions rather than commanding them, with the sort of husky, trembling, barely controlled delivery that might sound played out in this lane if it wasn’t for how the anxiety is part of the point. This is an album that’s built on plainspoken relatability more than anything, and given I’m fifteen plus years removed from high school, I understand why it wouldn’t quite click… except there’s a swathe of teenage acts I’ve been able to appreciate in recent years for this strand of melodrama, from McRae’s more obvious influences to acts like chloe moriondo or PinkPantheress, so that’s not the only issue! A big problem is McRae’s vocals, where in her poor girl’s Alessia Cara delivery it’s obvious that it’s less choice and more vocal limitations - she can’t project or belt convincingly, she openly strains to hit high notes, and every break amplifies a sense of profound weakness and insecurity, which really does not work when she has her kissoff songs like ‘don’t come back’, ‘i’m so gone’, ‘what would you do’ and ‘what’s your problem‘ undercut by the lingering ‘not over it’ that can’t land any punches. Which would be fine if the writing was interesting or textured in its sadgirl angst, painted a fresh scene or provided interesting insight, but again, we’re playing to raw basics leaning really hard on relatability, where every song wallowing in angst is unconvincingly followed by something that tries to push against it, and it just leaves the album feeling really unbalanced. Granted, the production really doesn’t help: this is an album that wants to fit at the intersection of trap pop and the 2000s teen pop rock revival, so you get the leaden programmed percussion and scenes that try to rely on cribbing wholesale from Billie Eilish’s formula without the subtlety to set the atmosphere - and inconsistent vocal mixing track to track really doesn’t help - placed opposite desaturated, weedy guitars that lean on rickety acoustics without muscle or groove. I know some like the attempt at pop rock of ‘she’s all i wanna be’, but compare even with the most vulnerable material of the 2000s, it feels plastic without the spark or presence of that era - frankly, Tate McRae is better off with the dreary pop songs like ‘feel like shit’ and ‘go away’ that might feel like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish ripoffs, but at least feel more comfortable for her. But to be honest, this album lost me on its first proper track ‘don’t come back’… where it samples and interpolates ‘Ride Wit Me’ by Nelly and City Spud. You take one of the most kinetic and fun chill hip-hop jams of the early 2000s and you make it this clunky, you’ve lost the plot right out of the damn gate. Thoroughly mediocre at best, even if you find something relatable off this project, there’s far better than this.