Steve Lacy once called his commitment to DIY songwriting and production “the bare maximum.” The phrase—and the TED Talk it appeared in—championed humble tools like the jailbroken iPhone on which he recorded his 2017 solo debut as assets rather than limitations. If he could land a spot in the Internet’s lineup, score Grammy nominations, and book recording sessions with Solange and Ezra Koenig just from fiddling around in GarageBand—all as a teenager—why would he depend on professional studios and equipment to create? The motivational pitch struck a chord with aspiring musicians, but Lacy’s solo work had its limits.
Although his snippets, demos, and beat loops impressively melded rock, funk, and R&B into rich blends, the songs rarely amounted to more than appetizers. Lacy’s best and fullest works (Ravyn Lenae’s Crush EP, the Internet’s Hive Mind) tended to be collaborative, his cowriters and bandmates fleshing out his sprawling ideas. His second album, Gemini Rights, affirms the value of collaborators to the guitarist and producer’s process. These songs are engorged and confident, powered by deft performances and focused storytelling rather than raw talent.Lacy reset his approach to recording to make the album. After he struggled to write using his tried-and-true phone and laptop setup, he found success working in studios alongside other artists and professional engineers. The change in venue and method shows at every level. Where lyrics often functioned as placeholders in his past music (see “Something something something” from “Basement Jack”), here they are rooted in experiences. Gemini Rights was inspired by Lacy breaking up with a boyfriend, and the songs mine the turbulence of that headspace even as Lacy sings of other lovers.
He sashays between relief, regret, longing, and resentment. “If you had to stunt your shining for your lover, dump that fucker,” he croons on “Static,” dour guitar and keyboard melodies gleaming in the background. On “Mercury” his voice swings from delicate, dolce murmurs to an impassioned Auto-Tuned singsong. “Oh, I know myself, my skin/Rolling stones don’t crawl back in,” he sings, his emotions as mixed as his metaphors. The writing doesn’t always succeed at being intimate, but it is at minimum expressive, a change likely attributable to the singer Fousheé, who is credited on half the songs.
Lacy foregrounds his voice more than he has previously, harmonizing with himself and his sisters on “Helmet,” dueting with Fousheé on “Sunshine,” and cooing in an airy falsetto on “Give You the World.” The falsetto is his shakiest and least personal instrument, skewing mechanical on “Amber” and “Cody Freestyle” in ways that pantomime big feelings rather than articulate them. Although he’s often compared to Prince and Stevie Wonder, Pharrell and Solange are more apt reference points—they also struggled to harness their voices early in their careers.
Lacy’s lower, more talky notes are fuller and more playful, complementing his fluid guitar work. Highlight “Bad Habit” pairs bright guitar riffs and funk synths with pleading vocals, Lacy voicing his shyness with a knockout earworm on the chorus. On “Helmet,” theatrical adlibs and a plump bassline fill an otherwise defeated moment with warmth. “I tried to play pretend (Oh-oh)/Tried not to see the end (Ah-ah)/But I couldn’t see you the way you saw me/Now I can feel the waste on me,” Lacy sings. He’s more interested in understanding the failed relationship than litigating it.
As Lacy zooms in on particular feelings and moments in his tales of modern heartbreak and courtship, he tends to sound detached and distant even when he speaks in first-person, and not in a dissociative way. There’s little tension or depth to the songwriting even when it flares with color, a longstanding shortcoming in his artful but often straightforward music. Gemini Rights does not set out to resolve that tendency, but the album turns toward the path. For the first time, Lacy’s virtuosity is in service of his vision rather than the extent of it.
