Gemini Rights - Steve Lacy

REVIEWED: August 20, 2022

It has been 2 years since we last received a solo project from Steve Lacy, and I think I have overplayed his narrow discography more times than I can count. Generally, I was engaged while listening to Gemini Rights–I was interested in hearing about the romance storylines portrayed across the tracks, and the incredible instrumentals certainly kept me awake. I don’t believe this project was supposed to be groundbreaking or leave me with some sort of epiphany; it entertained me and I added about half of the songs to my playlist. I would say it did its job as an album full of summer bops. The instrumentals were fantastic, it was funk-infused to the highest degree, and the overall production quality of this project was out of this world. This was especially evident on Helmet, Buttons, and Mercury. Buttons was without a doubt the most well-produced track on the album, and this is only magnified by the addition of a stunning electric guitar instrumental; it made me feel like I was sitting and sipping tea in a dimly lit jazz café. Static had a very simple yet effective piano instrumental, which was much appreciated. Nowadays, artists can be washed out by the background, so going this route for the introductory track let his voice shine. A critique of mine is that it was so short--only 10 tracks--and the album rollout gave us 3 of the songs in advance, so we weren’t left with much when the full thing dropped. However, I much prefer this to what artists usually do these days. They drop an exhaustive album with twenty or more tracks. Many of these artists lack the versatility to keep me awake for this long. It can begin to feel like they are aiming for quantity over quality, as most of the songs sound the same: boring and flat. Compared to other Steve Lacy projects, I think this one was not necessarily as good. I will reference Apollo XXI and The Lo-Fis in my analysis. I feel that compared to these projects, there were fewer hits on Gemini Rights, but that it was just as well produced. I will again mention the weird rollout order–most of the best tracks were released before the full album was, which made for an interesting listening experience. Unfortunately, Bad Habit was run into the ground by TikTok. Usually, this doesn’t inhibit my listening experience, but the sheer number of times I heard it inflicted a negative recency bias on me (because I heard it too much recently, I don't like it, the opposite of a typical recency bias). Steve Lacy is an incredible vocalist and his rise into the mainstream light, especially last year and this year, is something that makes me very happy. R&B is getting oversaturated with songs that all sound the same, so this project is a welcome gift. I look forward to what his future projects will bring. Thank you so much for reading, see you next week!