Laufey
A Matter of Time
VINGOLF/AWAL
Laufey has—or at least her most adoring critics have—stood by a “jazz singer” tag for two albums so far, based on the Icelandic vocalist-composer’s tip of the hat to Billie Holiday’s quivering, achingly nuanced singing style, with but a hint of low-voiced Chris Connor when her music finds an occasional bossa nova’s sway. OK. I can work with that. The hopeful did something similar when Norah Jones hit the scene, and it was all jazz, jazz, jazz—until it wasn’t.
With its shadowy, sweeping, atmospheric sound courtesy of The National’s Aaron Dessner and her longtime producer Spencer Stewart, what A Matter of Time does, then, is present the “until it wasn’t” portion of our program by exposing the nerve of classicism that’s long bubbled beneath Laufey’s arrangements and melodies, exploiting the broader possibilities of her voice. You know, the not-jazz stuff. For deep in the heart of Laufey has forever resided a singer-songwriter sort—both a Joni-like figure using jazz as a means to an end, and the more traditional folksy likes of a Tracy Chapman, whose brooding melancholy reveals more apprehension about the possibilities of romance than it does upbeat positivity.
What that means on a new song such as “Silver Lining,” with its vibrato-heavy guitar and shimmering strings, or the uptempo and samba-riffic “Lover Girl,” ripe with hand-clapped percussion, is a glass-half-empty peek into desire. Though her Holiday-like quaver is the singing star of the lonely “Snow White,” you could never call this ballad’s simmering violins or its sparse acoustic guitar–driven score “jazz,” but something more akin to Anglo folkadelia and its forest-green finest. Same with the gently plucky “Tough Luck,” the trembling “A Cautionary Tale” (the album’s only co-write with Dessner), or the slithering, poppy closer “Sabotage.” Nope, no jazz here.
Anyone with the smarts and patience to listen through Laufey’s 14 most expressive songs of her career will finally understand that although their Gen Z sweetheart may dig jazz as an underlying vibe—a calling card to get in the door—A Matter of Time is more delightfully eclectic than that.
