Choppy waters ahead if you like your music in convenient boxes. But hardcore improv and avant garde jazz fans it’s safe to say look away now, you’ll be horrified. And yet Laufey doesn’t fit any existing model so dishing out scattergun rejection is as daft as judging a book by its cover or saying something asinine like “I’m an instrumentals only kind of jazz fan” or “I’m a chromatic rather than diatonic listener”. It would be a mistake to consign what she does soaked in the diatonic as it happens as just pop and not jazz relevant at all.
Fair cop guv but I’ve liked some of her stuff so far and yet can’t say I understood the hysterical hype, huge media interest and general hoopla that have greeted the singer’s every move. My toleration for treacly, tinselly warblings is perhaps more generous than most. And yet that said I am not even being stubborn at having no real desire to see Laufey live but am not at all against the idea of doing just that. Her voice has a weird vintage dreaminess to it that doesn’t seem to belong in 2025 and in this she shares a lot in common with the long gone mythical Disneyfied past than she does with the very un-cartoon like dystopian present. I don’t have a problem with that as a lot of good, bad or even indifferent jazz makes a certain Faustian pact in dealing with say the “Blue Note” golden age or going even further back to rewrite boogie-woogie, stride or even swing guitar. Laufey’s good at staring down the right end of the cultural telescope from a young woman’s perspective on the easy standout here ‘Snow White’ and – perhaps more controversially – seems to be quite taken by the thought of a ‘Castle in Hollywood’ which the way she is going seems odds on she’ll have a couple of at least. Oh go on, throw in a fake moat while you’re at it and a few beefeaters.
Laufey’s third studio album, themes of vulnerability, grappling with friendship breakups, the fear of love and the “uncomfortable” rather self absorbed act of looking in the mirror (there’s a lot of that) run rife. Longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart and producer Aaron Dessner help her expand her sound which gets lusher and more Hollywood by the minute.
Jazz adjacent, jazzy, La La Land-esque, chocolate boxey – yes all these comments are accurate enough where the singer is concerned. As crossover singers go I think I prefer the far ballsier Raye if truth be told or the less country side of the perennially fascinating Norah Jones. But wouldn’t it be far more interesting if proper non sleb jazz singers got even half the media interest – see our list of top jazz vocals albums for a few names this year – that Laufey receives? But, my innocent friend, the world isn’t always that clued up, now is it when the received opinion ordains that all that glitters is but of course gold and glamorous.
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