EZLA - Outcasts (2017)

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Written by Larry Robertson, posted by blog admin

Dark pop queen EZLA sounds like she’s ready to take on the entire world around her thanks to the musical prowess she shows on debut EP, Outcasts.  Originally from the West Coast, EZLA packed up and moved to Nashville and took the eclectic Cali music scene with her as she began composing the songs that would become the 5 tracks found here.  There’s no mistaking that the multi-talented EZLA put heart, passion and soul into here music, while nodding to her influences without ever directly copying them.  In a massively overcrowded music world where everybody is fighting for acceptance, EZLA sounds comfortable in her own skin and in her own voice.  That confidence is all over every inch of Outcasts.    

The title track opens with a broken, stumbling groove and EZLA’s world-weary voice making a gradual rises to the melodic heights of the song’s lofty, synth-heavy chorus.  Until it reaches this point where the tension of the intro verse’s staggering, Helter Skelter beats and twitchy sprinkles of keyboard melody evaporates, it felt like I was listening to a song where the ending was composed first and the beginning was written last.  It has this weird shamble going on that’s only resolved by the cut’s ultra-melodic chorus hook.  In order to catch the vibe several listens are necessary and it turns out that each individual track on the EP plays out in this fashion.  

Slightly more direct when speaking of percussive continuity, “Skeletons” relies on ever-changing synths in the verses that are welded to a steady beat.  The chorus goes for a more repetitious vocal pattern than the prior track with the lines “Sipping on souls like rum and coke,” and the song continues to buck the structure status quo by actually starting on the chorus and then changing course back to the first verse.  All throughout, EZLA’s voice smoothly shines the melodies until they become fine fragments that are quickly inserted into the memory banks.  Multi-tracked and deeply engraved keyboards combine bits and pieces of several melodies at once for a very strange take on EZLA’s genre of choice.  Is it trip-hop?  Is it dub?  Is it trance?  You could go on and on trying to nail down the fine print but it’s a little bit of every single type of electronica all rolled into one. 

 

Sullen and serene, “Satellites” is the most melodic of the songs.  Trippy synths, piano and achingly entrancing vocals makes for one of the album’s finest tunes and while some of the other tracks feature some pretty coarse lyrical expletives and gruffer delivery from EZLA’s golden pipes, this particular number is sultry and mystical from the moment it starts.  This cements “Hangman” and “Psycho Killers” to revert to harder beats and near factory industrialisms to really hammer the point home and end the album with a bang.  Anyone that thinks the electronica style has been stale and mined barren in recent years would be wise to give Outsiders a chance.  EZLA has resuscitated the genre with one meager EP and leaves us to ponder the magnitude of what she can accomplish on a full-length outing.