Lost In My Bedroom is just SO GOOD I can't get over it. I loved the demo but the mastered version is perf. I wish the song never leaked because imagine how much attention it'd be getting...
Blink and you’ll miss Sky Ferreira — at least, that’s how it’s been for the last few years, as her career has crept forward in fits and starts. A Myspace rat turned would-be major-label pop star, she’s tried everything twice, some things more than that, with varied success. Unlike the young women who’ve had success during the same time period — say, a Katy Perry or a Kesha — Ms. Ferreira exudes mellow cool. She’s a pop-music semisocialite who often appears bigger than the need to produce actual music. Success, in fact, may hold her back.
Maybe Ms. Ferreira doesn’t care, then? If so, “Everything Is Embarrassing,” the high point of her new “Ghost” EP, is counterintuitive and brilliant. A sly, lush postdisco seduction, it’s one of the year’s unlikely pop gems. Ms. Ferreira sounds phenomenal, the natural indifference in her voice finally having a suitable home thanks to the production by Ariel Rechtshaid and Devonté Hynes, which never heats up past simmer. As a singer Ms. Ferreira can be as square as Laurie Anderson and as evanescently saccharine as Stacey Q; on this song, she’s both, to tremendous effect.
That nothing else on “Ghost,” her second major-label EP, sounds like this is no surprise. Released in advance of her full-length debut, “Ghost” is an attempt to be taken seriously or to experiment, or to use all of the available big stage. Any of those strategies alone would be fine; all together, they reflect Ms. Ferreira’s lack of a true center. That’s different from being a polymath, which implies natural gifts at several things. Ms. Ferreira, though, is more of a slipcover, wrapping tightly around already-set shapes and giving them color and edge.
The filthy sweet “Lost in My Bedroom” could be an outtake from the “Sixteen Candles” soundtrack, but “Red Lips,” written in part by Garbage’s Shirley Manson, begins as a homage to Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and, at the hook, becomes a convincing appropriation of Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” The remaining songs, “Sad Dream” and “Ghost,” are mordant singer-songwriter fare in which the lyrics are darker than Ms. Ferreira’s usual mood. All together, it’s just another round of throwing ideas at the wall. Everything sticks, more or less. But for how long? JON CARAMANICA
Genre-bending pop songstress Sky Ferreira’s latest EP Ghost is out tomorrow on Capitol Records, and is streaming now on Soundcloud. The EP is the second official release in two years by the rising 20-year-old L.A. native, and at points utilizes a slightly different sonic palette than her debut EP. Although several songs on Ghost are still solidly rooted in the big-synth, ‘80s pop-influenced sound that continues to dominate today’s charts, Ferreira interweaves several comparably understated, interesting ballads without compromising what is certainly a more distinctive voice. Featuring production by Jon Brion (whose work includes pop stars from Kanye West to Fiona Apple to Best Coast) and Cass McCombs, and songwriting contribution by Garbage front woman Shirley Manson, the 18-minute release is surprisingly fleshed out and diverse. For an artist who has a limited amount of material, and has yet to release a full length (her debut I’m Not Alright is slated to drop later this year), the blending of styles illustrates a concentrated effort on the part of team Ferreira to move beyond her pop contemporaries to a platform of her own.
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Prefix They said the album is coming out this year.
This EP is so ****ing amazing and I've only spun it once.
EIE is a single right? Like I know her label won't send it out to radio or anything but it has a music video and such correct? I just wanna make sure I can include it in my best singles of 2012 list.
In this interview she says she's testing the waters in production and genres with the EP. I hope she includes more 'dreamy pop' tracks since they're being so well-received. I personally think EIE is a masterpiece, too.
Anyway, some reviews and interviews are saying 'I'm Not Alright' will be released this year - doesn't that mean she needs to have a real single out pretty soon? But then I'm not getting my hopes up too high - her music ALWAYS gets delayed
Sky Ferreira's rise has been just short of meteoric: She teamed up with Miike Snow's Bloodshy & Avant after their brief window of crossover fame at the age of 15 and commissioned a track or so each from professionals like Swedish indie popper Marit Bergman and serial songwriter Ryan Tedder. There was some music shelved and some routine image trouble, but she scrabbled her way back to square two with the help of more professionals: Dev Hynes of Blood Orange and Shirley Manson of recently revived Garbage. Now her protostar is brighter than ever and she's earned one of the biggest cult hits of the year. On her new EP, Ghost, she's settled into several mutually exclusive styles of music. It's official: she's the year's next big latent potential.
None of this is entirely fair to Ferreira. It says a lot about both her talent and tenacity that she's even managed this much of a comeback when every major label and producer has a basement cluttered with the discarded half-debuts and dozens of demos that never even made it that far. It helps that she's got connections from before and during her industry time, and that they're easily spun into anecdotes (her mentor, Michael Jackson! Her partner in vodka-bottle scandal, Katy Perry!). It helps that all those singles, hits or not, gave her residual name recognition. It helps that she shows candor about it, on Twitter and to tastemakers. It helps that she's got her alt-fashion and modeling gigs-- ever more necessary as industry demands layer multi-platform experience and brand support on artists like tiered skirts. And it helps most of all that Ferreira's spent the years since her debut cultivating an impeccable, or at least impeccably marketable, sense of taste. She's called her upcoming album more of a collection of that taste than a statement of an album. And though she's spoken elsewhere about how developing artists aren't encouraged to curate those collections as often as inherit them from someone else's drawer, everything on Ghost sounds like something Ferreira does genuinely like.
What Ferreira likes, it seems, adds up to a veritable nostalgia feed. "Lost in My Bedroom" burbles over with details, sounding as if Ferreira's actually lost in about 10 synthpop songs playing at once, three of which came from John Hughes movies and two of which are "Dancing on My Own". Her voice disappears into the mix as if she's disappearing into a one-girl, mattress-jumping dance party, and as soundtracks to those go, this is as gleeful as any. Earlier on, Jon Brion assists with "Sad Dream", which flitters from the mundane ("I hear your call and I let my phone ring.../ I listen to the stereo play") to the mythologizing ("I live by my own laws, I stick to my guns"), from calypso to folk, from the warbled vocals of certain Brion acolytes to the more petulant, wailing sort. It never quite lands on a chorus, but it never quite needs to; the hesitation fits the subject matter. The same can't be said, alas, of "Ghost", Ferreira's alt-country track. The songwriting's evocative enough, and Ferreira emotes with enough stirrings of yearnings, but they sound more aspirational than heartbroken. She's crying out for someone, but not as loudly as the track cries out for its Emmylou Harris.
Nobody's asking Ferreira to be an alt-country singer, though. She fares better and sounds far more comfortable on tracks like the Manson-penned "Red Lips". It's essentially a Garbage B-side shorn of a pre-chorus, and it wears its concept as brightly as its colors, but Ferreira sells it with a distant, almost tossed-off vocal. There's distance in Hynes' "Everything Is Embarrassing", too, but a different sort. Where "Red Lips" is haughty, this is sullen; where Ferreira snarls out the former's chorus, "Embarrassing" sees her really dancing on her own, her melody too plaintive, her vocals too understated, and the beats too hazy to register much beyond resignation. It's not a come-on, as some have written, nor is it the anthem it's clearly trying to become (and that the inexplicable overproduction on the Ghost re-recording seems to try to make it). It's a gift to everyone more apt to mumble "I wouldn't bother" than attempt a diva kiss-off, and it oozes relatability, which may be her greatest strength.
Ghost demonstrates well enough Ferreira's versatility, certainly her stylishness, but even more than those, it shows her empathy. At this point, she could probably carry an album on any one of those three, but it's probably not a coincidence that of her myriad, varied singles, she was granted her first true breakout from the latter, from a human-sized dance song. It probably won't be a coincidence either if that's the trait to grant her staying power.
Will the real Sky Ferreira step forward. The precocious 20-year old has been making music since her teens, with some early mentoring by Michael Jackson no less. Her second EP, Ghost, is a five-track offering drawing on a plethora of producers and collaborators, and defying any rational attempt to categorise her work. Rather it continues the scattergun approach to recording, evidenced in her singles, music videos, and debut EP over the past two years. Opening with the alt-folk confessional of “Sad Dream”, Ferreira follows with a smörgåsbord of styles taking in electro-pop, country torch song, grunge and urban crossover pop.
The record says a lot about Ferreira’s search, conscious or not, for an identity. She may be known as much for modelling as making music and that again might explain her chameleon approach to songcraft — but it’s not without its benefits. She delivers with panache, even in throwaway moments like on the electro-pop of “Lost in My Bedroom” where style rules substance, or on the 90’s grunge of “Red Lips”. The latter co-written with Shirley Manson of Garbage has Ferreira offering shades of Courtney Love and Manson herself.
Vocally she’s most compelling on the more intimate numbers like “Sad Dream” and the title track. Her sultry yet sweet tones sit closer to Lana Del Rey territory, itself a truer fit for Ferreira’s detached sensibilities. The end song, “Everything Is Embarrassing”, signals another potential direction. A tuneful piano ballad cleverly given a chilled, urban arrangement sees Ferreira mixing regret with a killer put-down: “Maybe if you let me be your lover/ Maybe if you tried then I would not bother.” Sky Ferreira could be the next big thing or just a kid trying to work out who she is and where she’s going. Either way, Ghost is an interesting ride.
I can't get over it. I loved the demo but the mastered version is perf. I wish the song never leaked because imagine how much attention it'd be getting...
It balanced praise and criticism pretty well tho
