When it comes to reinterpreting songs, how you sing matters just as much as what you’re singing. Louis Armstrong turned an apocalyptic dirge into a celebration of new life and a New Orleans jazz funeral standard with his recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Whitney Houston transformed a limping nationalist anthem into a tear-jerking ballad of resilience with her 1991 performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at that year’s Super Bowl. Excavating new meanings from old work and stirring new emotions: This is the talent electronic artist Mhysa brings to her latest album, Nevaeh, as she plants seeds of R&B, pop, and spiritual hits and allows them to bloom over crashing beats, twinkling chimes, and playful synths.
Mhysa is the musical alter ego of New York City-based conceptual and visual artist E. Jane. In her experimental club tracks, she channels the legacies of black women icons into visions of utopias. As she did on her 2017 debut fantasii, on Nevaeh Mhysa borrows sentiments from cultural greats like Lucille Clifton and Janet Jackson, translating and interpolating them with an ear for industrial sounds and unorthodox compositions. On the minimalist “breaker of chains,” Mhysa repurposes Lauryn Hill’s smoldering hooks from Nas’ 1996 track “If I Ruled the World,” her crisp, airy soprano infusing the declarations of world change with delicate hope. Accompanied by a quiet tambourine and a cavern of reverb, she replaces any suggestion of Nas—who allegedly abused singer Kelis, one of Mhysa’s inspirations, during their four-year marriage—with an expansive silence. She accomplishes a similar transformation in her own repeated renditions of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” breathing passion into every line. Throughout Nevaeh, Mhysa offers up the lone black woman’s voice as a conduit for an age-old dream of heaven, or the album’s title spelled backwards.
For many, there’s no greater utopia than the crush and ecstasy of a dancefloor. And since Mhysa’s beginning in 2015, she’s proven she knows the way around a club banger. Despite that track record, Nevaeh includes just one all-out dance track, “Sanaa Lathan.” The song’s braided textures link it to the rest of the album, which is more ethereal. Instrumental track “Float” alternates sped-up and slowed-down samples that evoke the solemnity and resonance of a cathedral organ. Meanwhile, “sad slutty baby wants more for the world” features an R&B vocal sample that delays and dissolves on loop into a ghostly chorus approaching white noise.
When Mhysa appears as a vocalist and lyricist, it’s with all rough edges exposed. Rather than masking vocal aberrations, Nevaeh’s lo-fi production and embrace of background sounds—like a door slam or a sharp inhale before speaking—highlight occasions when Mhysa’s gospel-rooted melismas go flat or stray from buttoned-up convention. Her unguarded presentation, along with the embrace of sexual desire in her lyrics, presents an unvarnished vulnerability often left out of the current bedroom pop umbrella. Softness and vulnerability, Mhysa reminds us, is not without its jolts, snags, and base desires. Hope and intimacy can be relayed through lo-fi production that flirts with the grittiness of field recordings. Though in rare moments on Nevaeh, that style approaches detachment rather than transportation, as on the meandering, minimalist ballad “bbygurl.”
Similar to the gospel pioneers who channeled heavenly praise through devil’s music, Mhysa offers promises of peace and salvation via seemingly opposed aesthetics like manipulated found sounds and striking production. Though Nevaeh centers on the idea of an ideal destination, its focus on journey and transportation is what makes it captivating. By its closing songs, dreamy contentment gives way to urgency, as if heaven is drifting away. “I want to fucking believe, I want you to make it better,” Mhysa sings repeatedly on “BELIEVE Interlude,” gradually curling the plea into a challenge. On Nevaeh, Mhysa draws strength from creeping change, where most others would only find dread.
Buy: Rough Trade
