Would it be totally ridiculous to say that Kelly Lee Owens has all the makings of a pop star? Maybe not a mainstream chart topper, but at least a niche legend, like Robyn or Carly Rae Jepsen. Aesthetically, she has an easily identifiable look down. That bob? If I saw anyone else with it, I would think “Kelly Lee Owens!” Her music videos are enticing enough to throw on at gay people music video night. Maybe you’d need to have some slightly more esoteric gay guy friends, but you know, they’re out there. The biggest point against her would be her music, however impressive it may be. The Welsh techno icon’s last album, 2022’s LP.8, was an experiment in divination that found her making what she felt her eighth album might sound like. The result was a record where rather than singing, her voice was frequently broken down into essentially just a sample. On the opening track, “Release,” she repeated that word so often that it began to feel more like an aspect of the song’s percussion than its vocals. It also, ironically enough, never gives you any, well, release. It builds to nothing, an ode to tension. That build-up of tension was present throughout LP.8, and after listening to it for a while, the album begins to feel like one big rubber band, stretching to its limits but never breaking. It seems it took Owens releasing another album for her to show us what release can feel like.
On her latest album, the bewitching Dreamstate, Kelly Lee Owens is back from the future and laser-focused on the now. Even in its most insular moments, this is an album that feels like euphoric celebration after euphoric celebration. The sprawling title track is an early standout, and as George Daniel’s steely bassline clatters along, you might begin to worry that Owens is only smoothing out the edges of her usual sound. In truth, the song sinks you into a deep trance in its first half before grabbing you by your shoulders and shaking you back to consciousness. The last two minutes of “Dreamstate” are among the most fun in all the music released this year. Listeners only get a few seconds to catch their breath before the album’s lead single, “Love You Got,” comes on to pummel you with even more thumping bass. Co-produced with Daniel and Boxed In’s Oli Bayston, “Love You Got” is the most immediately accessible song in Owens’ repertoire, and her soaring vocals create a lush wall of sound. It’s almost a little on the nose for this album’s first teaser to include “wanting pure euphoria” as a repeated refrain. This is also the case with “Higher,” which is built around a chant of “higher and higher I go” as the song reaches for the stratosphere. It doesn’t matter in the end; the songs are good enough to justify a bit of obvious writing.
Dreamstate is also home to some songs that feel more in line with Owens’ prior work, albeit dialed into the album’s maximalist mode. The slippery and buoyant “Sunshine” hits with the refreshing power of a splash of water to the face after hours on the dancefloor. It sounds like the extroverted sister to “Melt!” and “Jeanette,” off Owens’ 2020 sophomore LP Inner Song. That record was noted by some for its inclusion of a Radiohead cover and its feature from John Cale. Even on her most outre work to date, her reverence for titans such as these stands firm. The striking “Ballad (In The End)” sits at Dreamstate’s center, and offers a brief moment of reflection. Made with The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands, the song begins with quavering synths that carry a church organ’s mournful voice. For all the ways that Owens twists and contorts her vocals across Dreamstate, nowhere else but on “Ballad” does she achieve such a traditionally beautiful performance. Embraced by strings that sound alternately terrestrial and celestial, if there’s a song to get you crying on the dancefloor—something that pop songs throughout time have assured us definitely happens—this is the one to do it.
George Daniel isn’t just a creative partner for Owens here, he’s also her new label boss. Dreamstate is the first record released under his Dirty Hit imprint, dh2. Owens’ proximity to The 1975 drummer has also put her in the orbit of his fiancee, the year’s biggest popstar, Charli XCX. Charli has also thrown her support behind Owens as of late. Not only does a Rolling Stone UK feature claim that the “Apple” hitmaker is her co-manager, but she’s also included Owens in events like her Ibiza Boiler Room set and her forthcoming Lido Festival lineup. Her music might be a bit more left of center, but Dreamstate proves that Owens has the raw talent and ambition to break out in an even bigger way if she wants to. Is Kelly Lee Owens going to be the next big thing in pop? Probably not, but with the company she keeps, and the tricks she has up her sleeve, there are folks with worse odds.
Eric Bennett is a music critic in Philadelphia with bylines at Pitchfork, Post-Trash and The Alternative. They are also a co-host of Endless Scroll, a weekly podcast covering the intersection of music and internet culture. You can follow them on Twitter @violet_by_hole.
