Pop is perhaps best known for being upbeat and energetic, thumping and throwaway, transient and ever-changing, blown by the winds of fad or fashion. What’s Left To Lose is none of that and yet it is the best pop music you will hear doing the rounds at the moment.
It exists at a point where pop music gently slides into something more indie, hazier, more ambient, more ethereal and it is gorgeous, where dream-pop and electronica dance slowly and elegantly together. And Layzi is a great name for the artist who creates it. Not because there seems any lack of effort gone into making the music, far from it, but because the music is understated and relaxing, spacious and graceful, it is quietly majestic and brilliantly unassuming. And that is its charm, that is what makes it stand head and shoulders above the rest of the pop pack.
If You Want Me 2 is the perfect opener, a chilled and dreamy sonic slice, grabbing the listeners attention because it doesn’t play the pop game of trying to grab the listeners attention right from the off. In fact, it almost feels as if the track is a gateway to a sleepy dreamscape, a nighttime rabbit hole for your senses to fall down and the act of listening to the album is akin to lucid dreaming rather than one of active participation.
WL2L is a sensuous and soulful emotive drift of a song, the music hushed and the lyrics half-heard, the echo of a dream which on waking seems to fade but leave you with a good feeling, though you aren’t quite sure why and Again is a lovely and lilting piece of dream-pop poise.
If the idea of pop music leaves you with garish images of dance routines, Day-Glo bombast and studio gimmicks, conforming to the record industry’s idea of what they think pop music should be, then you will be happy to know that there is an artist out there creating her own version of what the genre might be about, should be about and doing it from the creative sanctuary of her bedroom. Pop music, if this even is pop music, (it seems way smarter than such a label suggests) is in safe hands, very safe hands indeed.
