Steve Lacy
Oh Yeah?
RCA
With the disintegration of his forever-underrated ensemble The Internet, wiry songwriting guitarist and vocalist Steve Lacy has been honing his solo sound like a diamond cutter refining his quarry with the sex- and soul-sational coming out party of 2019’s Apollo XXI and the rock/jazz/psych/funk jam of Gemini Rights in 2022. Yet as good and great as those early efforts were, Lacy still hadn’t entirely convinced us that he had his shit together in a fashion that spelled out S-O-L-O-A-R-T-I-S-T.
Oh Yeah?, however, gets the spelling right as it sees him move way beyond the reach of The Internet. Co-producing alongside former Odd Future/Internet member Matt Martians, Lacy now has a warmer, looser sound that still permits his guitar and synth reveries sharp focus on cuts such as the sweet, conjoined suite that is “Nice Shoes / In Your World” and the alt-everything-at-once “The Feeling.” There’s nothing on Lacy’s third solo album that comes across as being as overly simplistic and contagiously hard as his breakout hit “Bad Habit,” and that’s a great thing. Instead, everything from Lacy’s haranguing guitar sound on Oh Yeah?’s crunk closer “Bebe” (think St. Vincent meets Melvin Van Peebles) to his digi-keyboard-heaving opening title track makes it seem as if he’s trying to complicate matters beyond the usuals of anthemic soul-pop.
Additionally, that same open mix’s dusky heat and complicated melodicism makes it so that Lacy can maintain the proud candor of his romantic origin story—most prominently here in duet with the sonorous, angelic tones of SZA on the dramatic “Is It Cool?” and the divine funk acid trip of “Pure Colour” with a salty Erykah Badu—while also allowing contrition and confusion to soak through his melodies like too much vodka sweated through the skin on a humid night. With that, Lacy can cop and confess to all manner of love’s crimes and contusions while keeping his head held high. Oh Yeah? is the start of something big for Steve Lacy, and—if audiences allow it—something dense and daring for the pop charts.
