Albeit a bit twee, Gemini Rights is a rich-bassed reminder of Steve Lacy’s inescapable charm.
7.3
It’s been a minute since Steve Lacy first burst onto the scene with his Steve Lacy’s Demo EP, a brisk affair that showcased an impossibly young artist with an ear for knotty guitar loops and a buttery-smooth voice reminiscent of Mac DeMarco. He’s certainly been busy, playing a feature role for The Internet and helping to catapult them into R&B indie stardom.
But his solo career has felt on the cusp of genuine stardom for quite some time now. His first album, Apollo XII, was too scatter-gunned and disparate to really shine. But the later work of 2020’s The Lo-Fis drew from the right roots – a grander expose of the best things about his first introduction.
It’s probably unsurprising that an album titled The Lo-Fis brought him back to his best work. Lacy is best when it feels like you’re listening to a recording he made in his bedroom, looping his voice over itself and plucking guitars and buttery bass from the walls.
Gemini Rights, at its best, harnesses that kind of energy. The album resides within Lacy’s mindset in the immediate aftermath of a long-overdue breakup. It mostly features him embarassed to have ever dated this person. An album dedicated to the cringe you feel when you look back at a relationship and think – what the fuck was I thinking?
This is whether Lacy’s talents as a songwriter see-saw. His writing style is curt and literal. Frank Ocean he is not. The benefit to such an approach is an easy listening style, the kind that made “Dark Red” an instant hit. Lacy’s discography doesn’t require leaning into the speakers to catch a missed metaphor or any deep trawling of Rap Genius.
That style, at its best, marries beautifully with his songcraft. Tracks like “Helmet” and “Bad Habit” are standouts. The listener can focus on gorgeous but subtle key changes and tempo switches while Lacy’s singing sits front and centre and pleasantly well-defined. It also gives the album itself, much like The Lo-Fis, a deep-red simmering quality that makes it easy to sink into.
But Gemini Rights is not a world-beater album and won’t feature on many year-end lists. Why not? Sometimes the lyricism can get so literal and blunt that it becomes rudimentary. Listening to Lacy take pot-shots at his ex is not particularly enthralling when he doesn’t have any particularly unique or creative way of saying it. His complaints start to drag and while the album only spans 35 minutes there’s a sense that it should’ve been shorter. It’s too melancholic and one-note. Another issue is Lacy’s singing. It’s hardly awful, but it’s thin and not as engaging or able to keep up with the bass as much as his sing-talk drawl. There’s a sense that he doesn’t always play to his strengths. This is never an issue when he’s playing in The Internet, where his sumptuous bass-playing and knack for an ear-wormy hook are championed.
Maybe this is harsh. Gemini Rights feels like a place-in-time album and not a career-defining landmark. But Lacy might want to start thinking differently going forward. It’s been clear for a while – since “Dark Red” – that talent is no inhibitor for him. He just might want to slink back to his especial ear for a hook, and perhaps open a new songbook.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 