Sap

The project of Norway-raised, New York-based musician/artist/model/actor Kaya Wilkins, Okay Kaya won Norways Spellemann Award for best indie/alternative album of 2020 for her second album, Watch This Liquid Pour Itself. Work on the follow-up began in pandemic isolation in Europe, where Wilkins had traveled for a series of museum appearances and exhibitions of her art (one such installation amplified music made underwater). Using studios loaned by friends, she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced her third album entirely alone until inviting a number of guests -- including Nick Hakim, LRains Taja Cheek, the Moldy Peaches Adam Green, and over a dozen others -- to contribute finishing touches upon her return to New York. A concept album about consciousness ("Even my subconscious is self-conscious," she offers on "Inside of a Plum"), and with a title and select lyrics comparing certain human processes to those of trees, SAP is an off-balance, sometimes unsettling, meandering 15-track work that was also partly inspired by undergoing ketamine therapy treatments (the same song begins, "Doctor deposits the ketamine/Intravenously rushing towards my brain"). SAP opens with the dramatic, soul-tinged "Mood into Object Personified," whose woozy, Theremin-like keyboard and guitar tones and layered vocals seem to deliver listeners to a dream state. Its followed by the more straight-forward, yet still intentionally misaligned bedroom indie of "Jolene from Her Own Perspective," which has Wilkins imagining Jolenes reaction to the Dolly Parton classic ("I can’t believe we’re arguing about some man. That’s so silly"). What follows are tracks that combine the psycho-biological, relationship-based, personal, and character-driven on songs with titles like "Pathologically Yours," "Spinal Tap," "Rorschach," and "I’ve Spent Forever Planning a Crisis" as well as "Jazzercise," a funky, half-spoken, advertisement-styled track; "In Regards to Your Tweet," whose seductive sophisti-pop remarks "I write a song until I feel something new"; and "Like a Liver," a beat-heavy synth track that retains the albums swimmy sonic sensibility. Due to its length (nearly 50 minutes), cerebral constitution, and tenuous songs structures, SAP can take some effort on the part of the listener by the end, although its unpredictability, enveloping intimacy and creative restlessness are just as likely to engage. ~ Marcy Donelson