When we listen to certain albums, it can immediately become clear which songs are the singles and which songs are there to make up the numbers. This is very much not the case on Saya Gray’s latest effort SAYA, released in February of this year. It is a project that does well to showcase an artist who has spent years honing her songwriting and who really understands what makes a memorable pop hook. In preparation for writing about the album, I genuinely had to look up the singles, because truthfully, any song on this album could have worked.
Saya Gray spent a lot of her early career as a sidewoman, notably working as a touring bassist alongside Daniel Caesar and Liam Payne before she began releasing her own music. Her initial releases – the 2022 album 19 Masters and the EP’s QWERTY and QWERTY II released in 2023 and 2024 respectively – each feature just about as many contrasting sounds as anyone could reasonably expect on a single album or EP. Taken out of context the music can at times be difficult to parse, but the projects do operate on their own logic in a way that helps to create an interesting and unique atmosphere. With this in mind, I found myself surprised at the straight-forwardness of SAYA on first listens. To be clear, this is not to the album’s detriment; in fact, by stripping away some (not all) of the eclectic sonic range of her previous work, Gray has managed to put the spotlight on her songwriting prowess.
So, where to start with the highlights of the album? On an album pretty much devoid of lowlights, this is a difficult question. The opener, “..THUS IS WHY ( I DON’T SPRING 4 LOVE )” is, by Gray’s standards, a fairly straightforward indie pop fare. It has plenty of memorable hooks and lush backing vocals, accompanied by some catchy guitar work. There is just a hint of influence from the early 2010s indie folk craze in there as well – something that is also present on “SHELL ( OF A MAN )”, “PUDDLE ( OF ME )”, and “LIE DOWN..”. In contrast, tracks like “10 WAYS ( TO LOSE A CROWN )” and “H.B.W.” take the listener to entirely different places. Even on her most cohesive project to date, there are songs that, from the outside, don’t seem as though they should go together. What makes everything tick, however, is that on every track, Saya Gray sounds unmistakably like herself.
