Zsela’s music is rooted in intimacy, a term that both describes a profound closeness and serves as a euphemism for, well, fucking. In the case of the Brooklyn-based artist’s debut full-length, Big for You, her portrayal of intimacy is firmly the former. That isn’t to say the album isn’t sexy, but that her music retains the tenderness of a blossoming crush and the feelings that swell when you realize you’re witnessing parts of someone that typically remain unseen. Listening to Big for You is a bit like doing that “36 Questions That Lead to Love” exercise with the 29-year-old singer. From the first second of her new record, she introduces (or reintroduces) listeners to her hypnotic, honeyed voice and reels them into mutual vulnerability with each subsequent word.
In 2019, Zsela’s debut track “Noise” had a nocturnal beauty to her brooding, contralto vocals, and in 2020, her Ache of Victory EP perked the ears of Sade-worshippers with its memorable lo-fi R&B, including the nostalgia anthem “Earlier Days.” (Zsela, née Zsela Thompson, has a musical pedigree; her father, Marc Anthony Thompson, is the neo-soul artist Chocolate Genius.) Since then, Zsela has chiseled away at her full-length while performing alongside Caroline Polachek, Arooj Aftab, and Cat Power. She once again taps producers Daniel Aged (Frank Ocean, Kelela, FKA twigs) and Gabe Wax (the War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy), resulting in an eclectic, experimental album that straddles the worlds of alt R&B and folky indie rock.
The record is an exercise in presence, at times taking in deep pulls of oxygen, at other points folding into lyrical repetition or dropping surprises that leave listeners breathless. Zsela opens the slow jam “Fire Excape” crooning a cappella in her falsetto. Then, over a building funk bassline, she sings that she’s falling in love as day breaks on the fire escape. A moment later, a hose-blast of synths drenches her voice as she finds herself helplessly “falling down” into infatuation. It’s one of the most evocative vocal hooks (and earworms) on the album, and the boingy, sultry bassline brings to mind the more spartan pop-funk arrangements of Prince, combining the remixability of a club track with the hushedness of a coffee-shop confessional.
She seems to have found that if you want to be heard in a crowded room, don’t shout—get close and speak softly. The melancholy “Moth Dance” gradually lets out layers of musical fabric; Zsela repeats “I am alive” over and over at its end, finally with a quivering voice, like an affirmation that never really resonated until now. On “Lily of the Nile,” she reveals, in a husky stage whisper, that she “hitched a ride with the bride last night” as though she’s telling you a salacious secret. And “Not Your Angel,” a cheerfully breathy electropop anthem, treats lyrical obstinance as a flirting tactic and evokes the emotive, hook-forward baroque pop of Annie Lennox’s “Walking on Broken Glass.”
Some endeavors are less engaging, i.e. the baby-voiced, whimsical “Now Here You Go,” which neither enhances nor shifts the scope of the record. It segues somewhat awkwardly into the spoken-word-driven “Easy St.,” a steamy, abstract mood board of jazz guitar (performed by acclaimed avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot) and meditation. “Watersprite,” a slow-moving composition, feels indistinct alongside the more rhythmic drive of the record’s first half. Still, at 10 songs in 33 minutes, the album never overstays its welcome.
Zsela’s at that special juncture in her career—the one before too many people get in an artist’s head, want a piece of their pie, want a credit in their liner notes—that generates a refreshing authenticity. Big for You captures that rare, fearlessly vulnerable lightning in a bottle. It’s a collection of hymns for those yearning for an “I love you”—or even just a text—back.
