Unlike Kyla La Grange’s debut Ashes, her new album Cut Your Teeth makes good on the promise of its singles. It’s an album that has embraced its own commerciality without sacrificing its darker, lyrical intrigue, while a large dose of hypnotic production cloaks each song in opaque layers of synthesised beats and dreamily drifting vocals. Resistant to labels or classification, Cut Your Teeth represents a heady mix of different influences but nonetheless stands on its own two feet as an original artistic achievement.
After a strong opening in the form of title track ‘Cut Your Teeth’, that offers a slower, weightier version of the popular Kygo edit, ‘Maia’ propels the pace forwards with a faster, lighter, but lyrically two-dimensional track that acts as a precipice for a fall into the grand, soaring vocals of ‘Cannibals’. There is a sense that these songs stretch themselves out and explore the possibilities of the space, of hollowness, rather than desperately trying to hold themselves together in distinct separate songs.
As a result, the album flows from track to track, with each one accentuating a different stylistic element present in them all. ‘White Doves’ introduces an exotic rhythm that is compellingly secured in the steel drums of ‘The Knife’, while the sweeping melodic motif of ‘Fly’ is stripped back to make room for rippling, liquid bass of ‘I’ll Call for You’. The album finishes in the same vein as it began, with ‘Get It’ heralding a carefully crafted uplifting synth-pop anthem with an acidic, splashing beat. What makes it work so well is the consistency of the album as a whole and the way in which, despite some indisputable frontrunners, none of the songs is disposable but all merge seamlessly for a great overall effect.
Cut Your Teeth is unapologetic in its own vacuousness and insistent in making its polished exterior enough of an appeal in its own right. La Grange’s vocals are fragile enough to benefit from the heavier production and the very contrast between their ethereality and its assertive strength is responsible for much of the beauty of the album. In short, Cut Your Teeth is a majestic myriad, filled as much by the neon colour of pop as it is imbued with the darkness of lyrics of loss and pain.
