By: Matthew Mahr
Steve Lacy brings us a dreamy batch of songs detailing a broken mind post-breakup, producing a neat album that struggles to provoke any meaningful thoughts.
Steve Lacy is one of those artists I’ve been aware of for a long time despite never listening to any of their music (barring a feature on Tyler, The Creator’s 2017 project Flower Boy.) However, I heard a bit of buzz around him going into the summer. Friends of mine were recommending him and I started seeing positive reception to his music appear on social media more than before. This buzz was hyping up his second solo album Gemini Rights, which dropped in July.
Steve Lacy has something to say on this record.
Always a good start.
Lacy split from his boyfriend at the end of last year, leading to many fans assuming this would be a breakup album. They were proven right… kinda.
This is definitely an album detailing a breakup as lost love is a major theme of this project. However, Steve Lacy doesn’t really delve into what happened or even what he did. Lyrically, Gemini Dreams is a trip through the mind of a man who doesn’t know how to deal with breaking up.
Lacy finds himself lashing out to an unnamed lover often. On the album opener “Static” Lacy directly takes shots at whomever the subject is. He seems smarmy, almost like he’s singing the first part of the song to someone laying at the bottom of a well. It’s very lush and pretty. In fact, it’s my favorite cut on this album (which is funny because it feels like an interlude rather than a finished track).
Lacy chooses to spend the second half of the song talking about wanting to be okay, saying that he’s “longing for something secure.”
This comes across in the second theme of the project and its namesake: the duality of the Gemini.
Lacy is a Gemini, and throughout the album he explores this idea of having two sides. Besides the title of the album, he addresses this idea on the third track Mercury, where he says “You think I’m two faced, I could name twenty-three.”
Most of the cuts alternate between Lacy acting above his ex and desperately hoping for something to happen between the two again. On tracks like Amber and Sunshine, Lacy will claim that his ex will never find someone better than him while also saying the door is open for the two to hook up in the future.
Lacy is not afraid to punch at his ex though. In the spirit of duality, he also takes the time to take shots at himself. On the bossa-nova track Mercury, he spends the whole third verse acting aloof to what he’s established early in the song. He tells us that because he can’t get his love out of his head, he’ll just “cop a Porsche instead”.
Buttons alternates between Lacy blaming his ex for being abusive and his pride for not letting the relationship end. I appreciated the journey the instrumental took, becoming more aggressive and louder as the track ended. It reminded me of another modern album with major funk inspiration in Childish Gambino’s Awaken My Love. I would have loved more of this; the second half of this song is one of my favorite moments on the whole album.
Lacy’s vocals aren’t always the best here. He doesn’t have any rotten moments, but they seem to find themselves to be set dressing on many of the more lush, low-key tracks. He gets by often on some really sweet harmonies, many of which are supplemented by R&B singer Fousheé. She only gets one crack at lead vocals on Sunshine but credit to her, she knocks her parts out of the park. That track also ends with some stellar guitar work from Lacy.
Interestingly, the big single off this album Bad Habit takes this idea from the album to mind the least. It’s referential to being a Gemini and to love, but it’s much easier going and poppier than the other cuts from this album. I didn’t mind it as a single, but it does come across as chart chasing coming before making a cohesive album.
I think this idea of duality is really interesting, but it becomes a distraction at times. When you try to play both sides of the fence on every track, it becomes difficult to nail down an emotion for the audience to feel. Because of this, I felt the best execution of this idea came from two songs together: 2Gether (Enterlude) and Cody Freestyle. The former establishes a mantra of “together forever” repeated over and over. The latter knocks this idea down by directly referencing it with the line “We don’t gotta be together forever”.
When I listened to the albums, I figured these two tracks were written with the other in mind. 2Gether (Enterlude) sounds like something you’d play for a child to get them to sleep during nap time at school. The song even opens with the line “It’s nighttime”. I think this song is meant to be a dream where Lacy is still together with his ex. Cody Freestyle is his wake up. This song is where he has to drearily rub out his eyes and remember that he’s single and lonely. He becomes bitter and dismissive because he’s been removed from the bliss of what his dream was.
What are we left with on this album? I think Lacy had a really neat concept with this album, but it does get in the way of cohesion sometimes. As well, this bedroom-y lush sound Lacy is working with is being done by a million people nowadays. The weaker instrumentals and production feel amateurish and cliché. The good on this album is fun, but I found this project to not be terribly memorable.
All in all, I give Gemini Rights a thumbs up, but I don’t think you need to listen to the whole thing. Personally, the only tracks I see myself going back to are Static, Helmet, Cody Freestyle, and Sunshine.