Day’s 2015 debut album had a reverberant, widescreen, retro sound. Against this, “Cassandra (Cherith)” favors targeted close-ups; it heightens particulars, making Day’s voice extra uncovered and much more daring. All through the album, her supply feels questing and improvisatory. She’s so certain of her melodies that she will be able to embellish them at any second, stretching or speeding or wriggling them because the impulse strikes.
She breezes throughout types and eras. From a base in neo-soul, with hip-hop beats underpinning sinuous R&B melodies, Day additionally touches on jazz, Motown, jazz, bossa nova, piano rock and vintage-sounding orchestral pop. However a very powerful sound on Day’s album is her voice. It’s exact however uninhibited, typically carefree and typically fiercely intimate.
Cassandra is Day’s full first identify (she was born Cassandra Monique Batie); Cherith is derived from the Hebrew phrase for “to chop away.” However most of the new album’s songs are about lingering romantic and emotional entanglements, about how troublesome it’s to chop away or make a clear break. By the tip of the album’s sequence, Day has discovered some serenity, however solely after navigating an emotional labyrinth: from a reluctant, backsliding separation by means of a thorny new begin to, ultimately, a purposeful self-acceptance.
In “In all probability,” Day sings about questioning whether or not to set the file straight a couple of breakup with somebody she nonetheless loves: “In all probability inform the world that I hated you/However you already know greater than anybody that’s removed from true.” Her hopping, gliding, cresting vocal strains deal with blunt piano chords like roadblocks that she’s decided to get round, or above.
Day compares a mutually wounding relationship to drug-gang rivalries in “Narcos (H.C.D.).” Although she observes, “Your standard methods and my identical errors will make issues worse,” she admits, “I don’t like issues to finish.” The beat is obstinately sluggish, with a creeping bass line, whereas Day’s voice strikes in syncopated suits and begins, virtually arguing with herself. Within the old-school soul ballad “Backside of the Bottle,” she realizes “You’re unhealthy for me/I do know ’trigger I’m unhealthy for you,” however she offers in to temptation, with gauzy backup vocal harmonies easing the best way.
