Record Revue: Izzy Heltai, Ben Platt, Kalie Shorr & Tayls

Welcome to Record Revue, an EP and album review series

It feels like an eternity since I’ve had the time, and as importantly, the energy, to dive into records for the blog. I’ve missed it. And I hope you have, too. With a recent spiral, courtesy of my mental health, I’ve found myself clinging to art more than ever. As much as horror films, music is a haven and the most trusted friend you could ever have. It’ll never let you down or disappoint you. In fact, you’re likely to come out of an album totally transformed; perhaps, it’s the way an artist writes so precisely about heartache or maybe it’s the production that seems to dazzle like dewdrops in the early sunrise. Regardless of the path, the result is transcendence.

Check out the first roster of reviews below.

Izzy Heltai, Day Plan (5 Songs Written 4 the End of the World) EP

Izzy Heltai’s Day Plan (5 Songs Written 4 the End of the World) is like flipping through a volume of poetry, its tattered binding and yellowed pages hinting at a wealth of knowledge. “If you ask me to tell you why I don’t believe in goddamn religion, all that might mean, well, I’m learning that,” Heltai barks with a thumping yelp with the title track and opener. His voice has always carried with it a potent frankness to it, as if he’s been singing for decades and has no fucks left to give about, well, anything. But he also cares quite severely and deeply, as he sweeps over his melodies with a commanding calmness. It’s enough to send chills down the spine. Whether he’s longing to “live a simpler life” as he wonders with the orb-tinted “My Old Friends” or untangling from beneath toxic masculinity, and his own learned behaviors, Heltai has nothing to prove, yet he proves it all. The way to the heart is true, well-worn storytelling. Day Plan may not stick quite as well as his 2020 debut LP, Father, but it does (once again) affirm his talent to crush the heart.

Ben Platt, Reverie

“Tough times don’t last. Tough people do,” sings Ben Platt, wiping his tears onto notebook paper. “dark times” is one of many emotional pillars to Reverie, a probing dance-pop record smothered with enough grooves to send shivers into the brain stem. Stitched with three vocoder-affected “king of the world” moments, the story follows Platt as he picks up jagged fragments of his heart and rearranges them with painstaking care and resolve. He’s not about to let such pummeling heartbreak and adulthood worries to take him out completely, but he doesn’t avoid address the pain head-on and head-strong. “childhood bedroom” glistens with a Tegan & Sara tartness, whereas “carefully” pulls out the acoustic guitar for an indie tear-jerker and “happy to be sad” is certifiably the album sax-fueled show-stopper. “I’m grateful to be crying, crying over you,” he sings over a blip-bloop backdrop. “I’m lucky that we love so good. It has to hurt this bad.” Sadness is best served in whatever medium you so desire, and for Platt that’s both in the club, grinding out the pain, or alone in the bathroom with a bottle of wine. Both’ll suffice.

Kalie Shorr, I Got Here by Accident EP

Kalie Shorr is into witchy stuff. At least the fuzzy, static-heavy variety, conjuring up early-aughts punkish thumb-biting. Her new EP, I Got Here by Accident, confronts the transformational decade of her 20s with the same songwriting gumption that’s marked her previous releases, but finds her tossing in head-banging attitude and addictive musical elasticity. When she’s not calling out an ex-friend with “Amy,” who not only borrowed her guitar “for a whole entire year” but her ex-boyfriend, too, she chops down said ex-boyfriend with “I Heard You Got a Girl,” a pick-axe swing which might be among Shorr’s most delightfully unexpected lyrical yarns. “Baby, when’s the wedding? I heard you got a girl… pregnant,” she sings with a snideness on her tongue. There’s a welcome slyness to the way Shorr carves out her melodies, too, as she adeptly riffles through dead-eyed melancholia and fiery yelping. By project’s end, “Alibi” pummels and arrests the senses, doing acrobatic flips on the earlobes before catapulting right into the soul. That’s just her way.

Tayls, Have You Ever? I’ve Always

Tayls can through one helluva end-of-the-world party. Confetti erupts from Taylor Cole’s lungs with a whoosh!, a snarl smacking his lips on the way out. Alongside Greg Dorris, the two forged what would soon become the glitter-perfect supergroup, featuring Creature Comfort’s Jessey Clark (bass), Jo Cleary (violin), Mo Balsam (keys/vocals), Michael Taylor (synth), Andy Heath (guitar), and Atticus Swartwood (drums). Their debut long-player wastes no time to grab you by the jaw, yanking you back in the seat with “Like a Bullet,” the aromatic firestarter, and keeping you intoxicated across 11 more songs. “Like a Dog” is Cole’s most ambitious vocal, whereas “Better” gets down and dirty in the mud, slathering on the twang for an outskirts hoedown. “Fake Friends (Party with Ghosts)” is their spookiest, strings crying out like Jacob and Robert Marley clanking their chains in the attic. It’s the stylistic scope of the record that’s as marvelous as the vocals, often thrashing from grungy indie/rock to classic-steeped productions to full-on rave. And it’s never too much. In fact, it’s not nearly enough, signaling Tayls are just getting started. And we better watch out.

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