Dreamstate - Kelly Lee Owens: Review

Review by Lavender:

Kelly Lee Owens is a singer and producer who has received acclaim dating back to her 2017 debut for her fusions of electronic music with her own presence as a singer-songwriter. She has 4 albums under her belt now and in my opinion they get better with each new release. Her last effort LP.8 significantly increased the scope of her experimentation and made for a pretty interesting release. While Dreamstate is less experimental by comparison, it feels like she brought those ambitions and that knowledge back to her core formula and assembled a collection of thumping electronica songs with her always beating heart at their core. 

I had a feeling this album was going to be good based on two singles in particular which pop up back-to-back in the album's first half. "Love You Got" was the lead single and I absolutely love it. The track manages to deliver a well-textured glistening array of punchy instrumentation while also serving up refrains that are extremely tight and catchy throughout. That's the same for its slightly less verbose cousin, the third single "Higher." This track also blew me away with one of the most infectious dance grooves I've heard all year backed by these sentimental little key flourishes. When combined with Kelly's lyrics about being lifted higher and higher it really does feel like such a mentally elevating song. 

Those two tracks team up with another pair of hits to make for a great start to the album. "Dark Angel" is a bright start to the album with these propulsive drums and progressive house-style synth arrangements. It all builds and builds and gets sunnier and more glistening and delightful as it goes on. In contrast, the title track follows with a much more detached sound. It's much moodier and more nocturnal with springy synths that reverb out into the cold space in an incredibly satisfying way. 

Highlights emerge in the second half of the album as well. "Air" has a combination of playful synths and stiff pounding drums that I love to kick the song off. Once a deeper array of keys starts to work its way in the payoff just feels better and better. Every new element introduced into the track is great and just reinforces how much fun the journey it goes on is. "Time To" is a compositional favorite and one of a few songs here with a breakdown around the midpoint. This time there's droning distant suynths that take the place of punchy intimate drums and I love the way the track maneuvers back and forth between them. 

Elsewhere on the record there are tracks with a similar fusion style that don't quite nail it in the same way. "Rise" is one of the most dramatic tracks here with stiffer drum beats that transition into a much dreamier and slower passage with these sunny synth loops wrapped around Kelly's drawn-out refrains. It's not one of my favorite songs here but it does manage to hold my attention. Similarly "Sunshine" was dropped as a single but I completely forgot about it in the lead up to the album. It has those loud and vibrant synths that make for some of the best moments on the album but I don't think the vocal refrains are nearly as memorable as a song like "Higher."

My least favorite tracks on Dreamstate are unfortunately the ballads. The appropriately titled song "Ballad" dropped as a single and the title is exactly as on the nose as it seems. The song has a much cloudier and more sparse array of synths highlighted primarily by one warbling, reverberating tone. While I can't say the lyrics here are exactly revolutionary I can at least say the song makes more sense within the tracklist of the album as an exhale in the middle of the tracklist. The closer "Trust And Desire" is even slower and more focused on the lyrics which are quite encouraging even if the walk to get there can feel a bit plodding. It manages to wrap the album up thematically quite well with the repetition of "know better, do better" serving as the lasting motif of the record as it fades out. 

While it may look like I have mixed feelings on Dreamstate that isn't really the case, I like the album a lot. Even it's occasional lulls still manage to help reinforce the tracklist and themes of the record along the way and in combination with its spectacular high points makes for one of the better singer-songwriter OR electronica albums I've heard this year. It really does feel like a blending of old and new for Kelly Lee Owens. but with all of the wisdom and experience she's gained along the way coming together to make it her best collection of material yet. 8/10

For more electronica, check out my review of Caribou's Honey