Premiere: Lizzy Land, ‘Intro Music Plays’ (full EP)

Kevin Bronson on June 13th, 2019

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Lizzy Land (Photo by Ryan Marshall Lawhon)

On her debut EP, Lizzy Land confesses that she’s a little “Messed Up,” even “Losing My Head” and liable to do “Bad Things.” Would that we all could handle those travails with such comportment.

Land, the Portland, Ore., native who arrived in Los Angeles via New York five-plus years ago, engages in a dreamy style of electro-pop that treats her emotional vignettes for what they are: mere chapters in a narrative that can be changed by simply having the gumption to turn the page. Nowhere on “Intro Music Plays” (which comes out Friday) is there the Really Sad Pop Singer’s predilection for turning every four-minute song into “Sense and Sensibility.” The feathery production fits, too, absent mainstream pop’s preening melodrama.

Which is not to say Land does not emote, or turn those thoughts into occasionally sweeping cinema. Her voice is acrobatic, dialed back or airborne in all the right places. That was evident in her very first single, “Sweet Melodies,” released back in 2016, and on her diary entries that followed, such as “Messed Up” and “Call Me.”

The six songs on the EP comprise “a long scene that touches on one grand emotion,” says Land, who besides her solo work has collaborated with artists such as Nick Littlemore of Empire of the Sun, Paul Oakenfold and Mating Ritual. “I’ve had all these chapters, all these different scenes and phases in my life and while it’s taken me a while to piece it all together, the EP feels like my intro music — this is the beginning.”

New to Land’s followers (and some of her singles are in the millions of plays on Spotify) are the finger-snapping “Losing My Head” and billowing “Braids.” “I’m OK being lonely / because nobody really knows me,” she sings on the former. Which might not be the case for long.

||| Stream: “Intro Music Plays” in its entirety