Saya Gray - SAYA Review
Saya Gray’s SAYA is a heartbreak album that thrives on bold experimentation.
Japanese-Canadian Saya Gray has made a penchant for pushing square pegs into round holes, whether by the force of her non-conformist production or her intricate vocal performances. Since her debut album ‘19 Masters’ in 2022, Gray’s unique jumble of folk, industrial, and pop has garnered her a large base of passionate fans, and with the self-titled SAYA, she produces her most intimate and personal project yet, creating an incredibly rewarding listen, even if she can fall back on some repetitive tendencies.
A classical heartbreak album, Gray channels some of her most personal thoughts for all to hear. Album opener ‘..THUS IS WHY ( I DON’T SPRING 4 LOVE )’ has her mourning a significant but ultimately disappointing tryst, over some bold kick drums and thumping snares, along with a blend of somber strummed acoustic transitioning to energetic power chord on electric guitar. Her ability to use voice effects remains evergreen, injecting added soul and some truly gorgeous, delicate vocal harmonies. Nowhere is this more evident than on ‘HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP UP A LIE?’, with its chorus presenting an ethereal falsetto partnered with really smooth country steel guitar slides. ‘H.B.W’ (an acronym for heartbreak wake) gives us one of the brazen ventures on the record, with refreshing results. The chorus kick in with a beating, droning bass, and sliding vocals from Gray, reminiscent of some early Billie Eilish with some gothic stylings. The trap-adjacent hi-hats keep the tempo up as she laments and resents a boy, and it all comes together to be one of the best percussion work on the album. With how disparate her influences are, it’s a little difficult to pinpoint exactly why a lot of this works so well, but my best estimation is Gray’s clear intentional borrowing of multi-genre heartbreak instrumental conventions: the quiet acoustic strummings of a ballad, the heavy punk guitars, a constant oscillation of major to minor keys. She’s just one of the few that does such a deft job of using all of them at the same time. Standout track ‘PUDDLE ( OF ME )’ has all of this; a twangy guitar riff with hollow drums in the background, leaving space for a powerful chromatic electric guitar lick that leads directly into a moody pre-chorus. It jumps from there into a hopeful chorus, where Gray has some cheery vocalisations, synth pads fill out the back, and again sliding steel guitar to add needed texture.
The clearest culprit in what holds the record back slightly is when Gray’s idiosyncrasies fold into each other, making for a few tracks that can run a little long and be a little tiresome. ‘10 WAYS ( TO LOSE A CROWN )’ has some cute acoustic finger-plucking and subdued piano chords, as well as a chorus that opens up both instrumentally and vocally. But the back half remains largely static, and doesn’t quite justify its length. The same can be said of the aforementioned ‘H.B.W’, with maybe just one too many choruses acting against her typical musical efficiency, or with an aptly named ‘EXHAUST THE TOPIC’, a psych-folk-rock blend where a frenetic drum and guitar breakdown with punk stylings feels like it comes a bit too late to save the track’s repetition. That said, a similar breakdown on ‘LINE BACK 22’ brings an otherwise quite dour cut back to life with extremely tight drumming and some operatic arpeggios that really showcase the range of production on this project. Fortunately, album closer ‘LIE DOWN..’ gives us a final chance to bask in the emotional vulnerability Gray puts forward, coupled with drum pads that sound like footsteps, cutting through the reverb guitar chords and exquisite layered vocals where Gray proudly asserts her distinctive qualities as a lover with such sensitivity.
When announcing this project, Gray proclaimed that she moves fast and transitions quick, but for this record she had to calm down. Not only had her mind and body caught up to her prolific output, but a genuine heartbreak needed some reflecting. SAYA is a fairly perfect encapsulation of this mindset. Gray maintains her talent for leftfield production and arrangement, but brings with her a great sense of lyrical maturity. While she sometimes falls back on the few tricks she’s clearly comfortable (but exceedingly stellar) in, her capacity to surprise and catch you off guard is so incredibly distinctive, and when you sink into the lush instrumentation or the simple songwriting, Gray has a truly wonderful ability to conjure emotional landscapes that are universal in its specificity.