Ivor Lane - Postplay (Self-Released)

Ivor Lane is a singer-songwriter from Chicago with a fresh and unique voice. Their sound is reminiscent of Perfume Genius, Lana Del Rey, and even Cigarettes After Sex —artists who are inextricably influenced by the past and yet unmistakably modern. There’s also a strange mix of guttural emotions and icy detachment playing against each other simultaneously which calls to mind the isolated and dark, mystic contradictions of Nico. Lane’s first EP, Postplay, is a world of its own that is at once both deeply alluring and vaguely frightening, and they have crafted something entirely timeless because of the songs’ utter originality.

There’s a haunting, icy sensation to songs like “Loved Me,” and it’s as if Lane is taking certain elements of shoegaze, but elongating them and stripping them back to their true essence. Often, as on “Miss Me,” their vocals barely rise above a whisper, but there is still an intense power in the effect the words and tones have on the listener, as if there is something hypnotically happening to the subconscious. Even on a more traditional piano ballad like “I Wait Too Long” there is the feeling that what Lane is doing is radically experimental. Postplay subverts the past, invents the future, and refuses to rest in the present, thus becoming something which stands to become a minor classic in its own right.