Zzzahara 'Spiral Your Way Out' (ALBUM REVIEW)

"Spiral Your Way Out is a rapid-fire (half the tracks come in at under 3 minutes) journey of a love lost and a person beginning to rebuild. It’s not perfect, but if you allow yourself to be picked up by its swooping melodies and feel the sun on your skin, it’s somewhere close".

Zzzahara is American singer-songwriter Zahara Jaime; part Filipino, part Mexican, all California; or more specifically, Los Angeles. Waves of sun and grit spill out of this, their third album; a sound so uniquely Angeleno you can almost hear the traffic. Defiantly formed in the ashes of an ill-fated relationship, the emotion is thick and palpable. It’s a cliché to talk about sun-drenched guitar melodies, but the dreamy, beachy sound is undeniable. There are hints of Girls in there, of early Grimes, of Sky Ferreira's better produced moments.

The album opens with "It Didn’t Mean Nothing"; at first disjointed ethereal vocals, then a cool blast of angular guitars and a directness of sentiment that sets the scene for what’s to come. This album is about writing the wrongs of the past, correcting the narrative with the benefit of hindsight. "In Your Head" is a chunky, fuzzy, shoegazey delight that encapsulates the enmeshment of a messy love. The first third of the album feels like pushing away the past, but when we reach "If I Had To Go I Would Leave the Door Closed Halfway", the tone changes. There’s an acknowledgement of the ways in which we know those we love, how those pieces of the past are always there in our building blocks. The brutally honest lyrics and tender vocals on "Ghosts" build on this and provide the highpoint of the album. Final track "NY NY" feels the most musically adventurous, with carefully crafted aural layers that abruptly stop just as you’re figuring it out. Which feels thematically on point.

 

"Spiral Your Way Out" is a rapid-fire (half the tracks come in at under 3 minutes) journey of a love lost and a person beginning to rebuild. It’s not perfect, but if you allow yourself to be picked up by its swooping melodies and feel the sun on your skin, it’s somewhere close.

Words: Angi Strafford

Zzzahara official 

Spiral Your Way Out is out now on Lex Records