Ravyn Lenae's "Potential" from her new album Blue Island begins like so much of her delicate, freewheeling tuneage.
Crystalline layers of of warped guitar and warm bass create a foundation for her breathy operatics, as Lenae sings of love, desire, and loss. "Call me crazy / I feel the tables turning," she sings, hoping for the fleeting possibility of love and connection. There's a minimal poppiness to the track; drumless for much of it, one hears the skeleton of a more conventional Top 40 track, with its neat melodies and craftily built chorus that ascends above the verse's story-focused lull. But its minimalism makes you zero in on Lenae's sensitive songwriting and overall subtlety.
Something quite shocking happens right after the two-minute mark. Fuzz builds and then a metal scrape careens the song into pure Dariacore cacophony, Jersey-club drum patterns speed running through distortion, while winsome helium synths, that remind me of those used by Lorde producer Jim-E Stack, punctate the madness. All the while, the song's warm piano chord progression continues apace, contrasting what could be pure dizziness with something cozy and held. Layers of her vocals, echoed and filtered, loop and come in like a fog, before the whole thing fades away.
It's a surprising turn for a musician who has long stayed in a comfortable musical zone, somewhere between '70s soul and disco and 2010s indie optimism. The surprising musical shift feels invigorating, rather than random, though, as it still feels rooted in Lenae's undeniably heartfelt songwriting and composition.
If the sound is a thrilling fluke, then it added beautiful cinematic shape to Lenae's album, But if it's a brief preview of another entire sound to come, then it's certainly exciting.
