It’d be easy to slot Love Hallucination as Jessy Lanza’s most extroverted and pop-forward release to date. The story makes sense: After relocating from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles, stretching a well of influences on her DJ-Kicks mix, and writing songs for other artists before deciding to record them herself, the Canadian producer – whose airy, eccentric compositions blur the line between pop and club music – was filled with confidence that radiates throughout her latest effort. But this confidence doesn’t always translate into the sort of bright, euphoric dance music that’s had a resurgence since the pandemic, as Lanza taps into her playful sensibilities in complex and idiosyncratic ways. Take the opener ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’, which lurches forward with an upbeat groove before swelling with anxiety, as if it could spin out of control at any moment. The first song Lanza wrote and produced after moving to LA is about almost getting hit by a car; that fear later dissolves into a sense of freedom when she finds herself behind the wheel on ‘Drive’, a track brimming with texture and possibility.
What’s fascinating is the way Lanza exposes and layers these seemingly contrasting emotions, which almost exist in the same breath. Another producer might treat the uncertain vulnerability that rumbles through the 2-step-inflected ‘Midnight Ontario’ as a faint echo, but she makes it the focal point: “Why do you get the best of everything?” she asks before slipping into metaphor, “Falling like tears in rain.” Lanza has described Love Hallucination as a “trust fall,” an approach that invigorates both the more intimate and buoyant tracks while accentuating the mixed sentiments behind them. ‘Limbo’ boasts one of the catchiest choruses of the album – literally spelling out the letters in the title – just to illustrate the appeal of not pulling yourself out of it.
There is a slight ridiculousness in trying to capture sensitive subjects in such a lighthearted and public way, and Lanza seems to consciously lean into it. The sensuality her music has always embodied becomes explicit on late highlight ‘Marathon’, which even goes as far as to incorporate a sax solo before the pleasure is relatably cut short: “You talk too much,” she sighs. On ‘I Hate Myself’, the simple annoyance of crossing paths with someone “so cool” spirals into self-loathing, an inner voice Lanza brilliantly portrays as both insistent and alluring. It’s not the sound of laughing at your own pain so much as beating it to death.
Lanza’s songs still have an understated quality, but the small liberties she takes here only make them personable, vibrant, and affecting. The album’s middle stretch – particularly the songs between ‘Don’t Cry on My Pillow’ and ‘I Hate Myself’, all co-written and produced with longtime collaborator Jeremy Greenspan – features some of its most thrilling and dynamic production. The juxtaposition between warm, glimmering synths and Lanza’s forceful vocals on ‘Don’t Cry on My Pillow’ make the song feel alive, laying out a scene where the singer clearly has the upper hand. ‘Big Pink Rose’ brings to mind Let’s Eat Grandma, but the intimacy of those intertwining voices wouldn’t be the right fit: it’s a song about panicked isolation just as it starts feeling like a dream. Love Hallucination may have been inspired by Lanza’s new environment, which also informs the album’s visual imagery, but it drives her to delve deeper into her own creative world, one that’s ripe with contradiction and desire, bewilderment and imagination. We’re just lucky to be trusted with a solid record of it.