“DD Review: Kacy Hill – Like a Woman.”

Score: 7/10

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Considering that Kacy Hill resides on Kanye West’s own G.O.O.D. Music label (an acronym standing for “getting out our dreams”) and is now issuing her first full album after a single and an EP, it’s a little surprising that she’s not a little more all the rage now. But then, we’re living in an overwhelming time in which we’re privy to a mind-boggling amount of music at a mere click (I’m almost kind of glad, for an artist’s sake, when I can’t access them for free on Spotify).
Or, here’s a better reason why you haven’t heard of Kacy Hill, or if you have you’ve inundated a certain niche sector of music listening: it’s music for solitude, too genuine and deliberate to soundtrack occasions of gathering. Her acrobatic falsetto seems to always croon out such direct corroboration of emotion as to render it voyeuristic to watch somebody else listening to this.
Also, one reason why I liked it at first was that it reminded me a little of Lorde but somehow seemed less reliant on cliched production ploys. And I really WANT to like Lorde — such a thing would behoove my enjoyment of Bonnaroo, a festival which used to actually brandish an edgy lineup from The Roots to Ween, once upon a time [1].
“Cruel” plays as the obvious first single off of Like a Woman, following the lugubrious titled track opener and the hauntingly arhythmic “Keep Me Sane.” On production [2], Stuart Price cooks up an enticing stew of somehow military-but-ambient snares and bumblebee-sounding synths, the former making sporadic entrances and exits so that the song lays down as a bit heterogeneous journey of stopping, and going. “Hard to Love” is more post-Obama pop, buoyed by the compelling continued chorus: “You make it hard to love”.
“Static,” sort of is just that, whereas “First Time” does gather a certain kinetic energy and give the listener the sense that music is GOING somewhere. This being said, two primary things plague Like a Woman throughout the majority of the project: one being a lack of collaborations and distinct, memorable background vocals, the other being a certain emotionally monochromatic aspect. All of these songs, basically, are sad and pertinent to romance: nowhere do we have the platonic ode in the vein of Sarah McLachlan’s “Adia” or “Angel” (I know it’s an old horse but I’ll keep beating it until it ceases to be applicable to my discussions), or a sense of humor, like say Lily Allen’s “Nan You’re a Window Shopper.” The Florence + the Machine influence, though, is potent enough to more than justify comparisons, and Hill’s voice might be even better.
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[1] Hmm, nice, I just noticed both those acts are from Pennsylvania.
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[2] Interestingly, although it’s Kanye’s label, he’s not on the knobs anywhere on the album.