Stream: Zella Day, ‘Where Does the Devil Hide’

Kevin Bronson on August 29th, 2020

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Zella Day never directly answers the titular question of her new EP “Where Does the Devil Hide,” but you can read between the lines: “They tell you that they’ll never tell you a lie / Put you in a spell to get you on their side / They’re trying to hide but they’re crossing the line,” she sings on the opening track “People Are Strangers.”

That applies to a romantic interest, but it could speak to the machinations of the music business, the legal entanglements of which kept the 25-year-old singer-songwriter largely off the radar the past five years.

Day, who grew up in Pinetop, Ariz., was 20 when she broke out with the album “Kicker,” an effervescent collection of songs that slyly shifted between genres and established her as a bright, charismatic new voice. She followed up with the single “Man on the Moon” / “Hunny Pie” in 2016, the year she played Coachella and Lollapalooza.

Day’s return to the spotlight was foreshadowed late last year when she released a wonky-but-cool cover of Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” — not the first time she got the ball rolling with a cover song, since it was her take on the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” back in 2012 that first earned her attention.

The five songs on “Where Does the Devil Hide” were made in less than a week in Nashville, with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach producing and co-writing. Songwriter/producer Dan Nigro, who has worked with the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen, Caroline Polachek and Conan Gray (as well as Day’s 2016 singles), contributes, as does legendary Memphis Boys keyboardist Bobby Wood, who is among the backing musicians and is credited as a co-writer on “My Game.” Note to self: Anytime you can get somebody who played with Elvis to be on your record, by all means do so.

The EP’s mix of string-laden balladry (“Only a Dream”), disco lite (“My Game”) and soft rock comes with a haze of ’70s nostalgia that risks sounding contrived on the post-Lana Del Rey popscape. (See Auerbach’s work with her.) But there are little flourishes that keep things interesting — in “Purple Haze,” after Day confesses to “smoking with no clothes on,” the song trots into the sunset on a spaghetti Western riff.

The EP, which came with a series of strong visuals, is a precursor to a full-length that Day has in the works.

||| Watch: The videos for “Purple Haze,” “My Game” and “People Are Strangers”