The new single from London-based artist Lelia, Hair starts with a ripping bass line and thumping drums, immediately delivering a dark sense of confrontation.
As an artist, Lelia builds her sound from a combination of thick synths, angular percussion, and direct confrontational vocals. With touchpoints that include artists who, on paper, appear very diverse — Lady Gaga, LCD Soundsystem, and PJ Harvey — Lelia weaves those references together to feel cohesive and, in retrospect, obvious. Of course the darkness of Harvey blends with Gaga’s penchant for drama, and the throbbing electronic post-punk rock of James Murphy underpins it all like a slowly boiled frog.
As we hear on Hair, the overall result is a beautiful cacophony. The third single taken from Lelia’s forthcoming debut album, Dark Disco, the song is an embrace of destruction, applying Daft Punk’s dance-forward production to a song that is a far more direct exploration of sex, desire, and identity.
Employing overdubbed vocals liberally against a backing that is grounded in grungy sounds and a hissing electro bass line, the sound here evokes a sense of size. Lumbering, heavy and formidable, Hair embraces exactly the kind of building details Murphy deals in — hi-hats and cow bell create a kind of disco punk crescendo as the song nears it’s conclusion. With a sound that is itself big, Lelia is deliberately evoking a feeling of scale, as she describes:
“It’s about rejecting everything material. If I make my hair as big as possible then, in a nod to Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958), I'll destroy anything in my path in the quest to dance and be free.”
I love the intersection of genres Lelia is channeling here, and can’t wait to hear more. Check out Hair below, and look for the album, Dark Disco, due 6 November.
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