Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why can Steve Lacy STILL not figure out how to approach someone? Steve Lacy’s new album, Oh yeah? was one of my most anticipated albums of the year, after his previous album Gemini Rights slowly crept its way into my listening from 2022-23. With its lush, summery sound and choruses that stuck in my head for weeks, it has continued to grow on me year after year, which fueled my anticipation for this new album. Was it worth the hype? What does it sound like? Let’s get into it.
First off, I appreciate how Oh yeah? immediately sets itself apart in Steve Lacy’s catalog with its darker sound palette. In stark contrast to the nostalgic and warm sound of Gemini Rights, Oh yeah? is gloomier and more ominous in comparison. It’s a night and day difference; from a sky filled with sun to one more gloomy and showing signs of thunder and rain. The eerie psychedelic synths on some tracks and the bare acoustic guitar on others bring an isolating feeling with them, and song titles like “doom” and “nothing” only emphasize that. Even on warmer tracks like “is it cool?” there’s a feeling of unease and uncertainty that never quite lets up. This sound works very well for Steve Lacy, and is a lot better suited to his lyrics when he sings about his romantic woes and toxicity. His voice often sounds pained on this album, and there’s a sense of desperation in how he sings. This was present on his last record as well, but the darker shift in tone makes it even more apparent. Despite this, there are still plenty of earworms. The choruses on songs like “the feeling,” “show you me,” and “doom” are incredibly catchy, and as always Steve Lacy’s smooth singing voice makes his melodies sound intoxicating despite the subject matter. His vocal performances on this record all typically hit the mark, and like his R&B contemporaries Brent Faiyaz and The Weeknd, he makes toxicity sound so pleasant to listen to. When I have issues with certain tracks on the album, they are usually due to a lack of structure rather than any fault of Steve Lacy’s voice. The songs “pure colour” and “nothing,” though they sound perfectly fine, meander and feel directionless in their pace, and their relative lack of lyrics and greater focus on atmosphere contribute to this. Though that change in focus can be executed well, it is not done so here.
As I said before, this album’s lyrics are mostly about Steve Lacy looking to find love and lasting connection despite his toxic tendencies and past behavior. Lyrics like “I just cheat every now and then / That was hard for me to admit / ‘Cause I really want commit / Really, really want commitment,” and “You’re so special, I gotta be careful / Goddamn, we’re such a mess” make that especially clear. There are no full-on love songs here, though there are love* songs. Most come with a caveat; repentance for past behavior or a need to feel something. Though it’s not his Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers or anything, it’s a vulnerable record to make, and one thing I really want to give Oh yeah? credit for is that it feels honest. There are a couple lyrics that feel almost TMI in how they’re presented, but when Steve Lacy sings lines like “My dick is gettin’ hard again / At the thought of you and me holding hands,” I believe him. When I hear this album, and more specifically when I hear him sing, I imagine someone lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking about how the night could have gone so much better if they hadn’t screwed up, or if they had just said that one thing a little better. Even if it results in some poorly thought-out lyrics on occasion, this honesty is a quality Steve Lacy shows very well.
Another aspect of Steve Lacy’s lyrics that I enjoyed is the looming existential dread he communicates. He talks of feeling that life is short, that “we could die any day,” that “life is moving on / I don’t wanna lose again.” One could even interpret the song “pure colour” as representing a weed-induced high he uses to escape these darker thoughts (at least that’s how I choose to interpret it). I think this is one of the reasons why Steve Lacy sounds desperate to find real love and to overcome his tendencies, whether he succeeds or not. In a time period where it slowly feels like the world is ending, be it due to climate change, COVID, or an increasingly erratic government, this can be a relatable feeling, even if you wouldn’t go about it in quite the same way. This has been an exhausting decade, and it’s hard not to feel the effects of that, especially in finding human connection. The way this feeling affects the darker tone of the album, both lyrically and sonically, is subtle but noticeable, and I think that makes the tone shift feel even more natural and powerful.
I do want to take time to mention the penultimate track “nice shoes / in your world” and the closer “bebe” mostly because I haven’t yet. The former is an ambitious song with an opening breakbeat-influenced track with pounding kick drums that transition into a slower R&B jam, and it’s a powerful mood switch. The track feels lively and comforting and goes the extra mile to create a self-contained experience for the listener. The closer “bebe” is another slow psychedelic love* song, where Steve Lacy sings of being put under someone’s spell and entranced by them, perhaps finally finding love despite his own issues. However, the track still feels off-kilter and eerie in a way with its lumbering, dour-sounding guitars and ethereal falsetto. It makes the listener feel like they’re drifting away into space, and I picture it as an “end credits” moment with “nice shoes / in your world” really being the album’s climax. I like how the album ends in a way that feels optimistic but still uncertain. Steve Lacy finishes the album by first singing of his internal anxieties and how he needs someone but feels stuck in his own head, and then of him being entranced by a person who could perhaps be that someone. Or will they? Either way, he’ll continue onward and find some kind of connection in these hard times, as we all try to.
As a whole, I really enjoyed this record. It has many of the catchy choruses, tasteful R&B instrumentation, smooth vocals, and yearning lyrics that I expected from Steve Lacy, with a darker tone and looming existentialism as a pleasant surprise. Even though I do think the record suffers from an occasional lack of structure and lower quality lyrics than expected, this is still a great record, one which shows Steve Lacy further fleshing out his sound and moving a step forward as an artist. Check out the album and form your own opinion (please).
