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Jessy Lanza takes us on a tour of her hometown Hamilton

JESSY LANZA at Lee’s Palace (529 Bloor West), Friday (July 15), doors 8:30 pm. $15. ticketfly.com.


On a sunny May afternoon, Jessy Lanza cuts through the Jackson Square mall in downtown Hamilton on her way to her studio. Usually she would bike, but I’ve asked her to show me around her hometown to get a sense of what her life is like in the Steel City, which is why we’re walking inside a hulking building on the first warm day of the year.

We pass a boutique called LA Boulevard, where lines of mannequins model low-rise embellished jeans. “This is where I buy my leggings,” Lanza says with a laugh. 

She’s casual and laid-back as she walks me through her childhood, pointing out the fountain whose jutting flat rocks she used to climb out on as a kid, like an intrepid adventurer, and the open forum where she gave her first “concert,” a performance of Somewhere Out There from the 1986 animated movie An American Tail. 

And in the colder months when she was writing, recording and producing her sophomore album, Oh No (Geej/Hyperdub), she used the sheltered mall to get from her house to the studio.

Oh No’s artfully arranged electronic pop songs reference 90s R&B, disco, Chicago footwork and 80s Japanese electro. It’s a bold progression from her 2013 debut, Pull My Hair Back, in which Lanza hid her vocals behind layers of vintage synth melodies and drum machines. 

“I felt less cautious and more confident with this one,” Lanza says as she sips coffee at Ark & Anchor, a trendy little café near her house. “It was really liberating to feel like I could sing in a way that was less obscured. I didn’t care if people thought my voice was shitty or weird.”

After making peace with her voice – an insecurity she’s had since she was a kid – she faced a new hurdle. When she submitted what she thought was the finished album, her London, UK-based label, Hyperdub, wanted her to scrap half the songs.

“I was pissed at the time,” Lanza says, “but I think at the back of mind I knew they were right about the ones they wanted to scratch.” 

For a month, she holed up in her studio and wrote a bunch of new tracks, including two of Oh No’s catchiest, VV Violence and Never Enough. Rewriting half an album on deadline was stressful, but the classically trained pianist – who grew up surrounded by music thanks to a father who outfitted the family basement with synths, drum machines, mixing consoles and reel-to-reel tape recorders – knew she could do it. 

“He was very encouraging when it came to songwriting,” she says of her dad, who passed away when she was a teen, “always pushing on me the importance of writing your own tunes.”

Musically, one of the biggest influences on Oh No was the Tokyo electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra. 

“Their production is slick and perfect. There’s so much care put into every sound,” says Lanza. “It takes incredible technical ability, but at the same time, they have this playfulness. I can’t stand when people take themselves too seriously.”

Lanza says in recent years she’s encountered too much earnest, humourless music. Oh No, therefore, maintains its sense of fun, from house grooves that sound straight from a 90s club and Lanza’s mischievous taunts (“I say it to your face but it doesn’t mean a thing, no!”) to the hyper-frenzied vocal samples on It Means I Love You.

Although she’s branded as a solo artist, she insists her partner, Jeremy Greenspan, one half of Hamilton-based electronic band Junior Boys, is as much a part of the project as she is. The song I Talk BB exemplifies how they collaborate: Lanza brought over the drums and vocals, but it was Greenspan who added the moody, jittery intro, the jazzy piano chords and the reverb. 

Each song is collaborative but starts with Lanza alone feeding off a tiny nugget of inspiration, like a sample she made after going down a YouTube rabbit hole or revisiting a sketch from years earlier. 

“I don’t like jamming with people. I like working alone with whatever shitty idea until I get one that’s worthwhile.”

Later in the day, we walk to the house she shares with Greenspan, a cottage-like bungalow surrounded by a black iron fence. In their living room, a grand piano from Greenspan’s grandmother sits in a corner. Giant square LED lights, which Lanza just finished programming for her current North American tour, are stacked against a wall. 

She’s a self-professed homebody with so many tropical plants atop window sills and shelves that her home feels like a greenhouse. While working on Oh No, she became obsessed with the idea that the air in their house was toxic and slowly killing her hence the lush foliage. To help with anxiety, she practises meditative yoga daily and hangs out with her mom and three sisters, all of whom live in Hamilton. 

“They’re a major reason why I stay [in Hamilton],” Lanza says. “I need to be close to them for my sanity.

“I definitely use music as an escape, but at the same time my ambition is to make something that other people can escape or slip away into as well. I do it for other people as much as for myself.”


Jessy Lanza’s favourite musicians from the Steel City

Doobie Freaks

“They’re my favourite Hamilton band! The Doobs always surprise in the best way possible,” says Lanza. For example, last year the weird electronic band played a three-and-a-half-hour set at the historic Hamilton Guest House.

Orphyx 

“Christie Sealey and Rich Oddie [of Orphyx] have amazing records and are great to see live,” Lanza says. Straddling the techno and industrial music worlds for over two decades, Orphyx have played at venerable Berlin clubs Berghain and Tresor as well as Luminato’s Unsound and Mutek in Montreal.

Sourpussy 

In concert, Sourpussy have experimental instrumentation – horns, accordions, flutes and drums – plus vocal theatrics and spoken word. As Lanza notes, “It’s hard to describe the performance. It’s really something you have to go see in person.”

Motëm 

The producer/MC is known in his hometown for his emotional, languid hip-hop, which Lanza says “is a creative force that brings you into his little Hamilton bubble. It’s really weird in there.”

music@nowtoronto.com | @SamEdwardsTO

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