Yazmin Lacey at City Recital Hall 7 June 2023

Review by Joshua Duffy / Photography by Joe Johnson

Last week, Wednesday June 7, the City Recital Hall in Sydney was graced with the contemporary R&B and soul of UK’s Yazmin Lacey. Supporting Yazmin was Melbourne producer IJALE and Sydney’s Natalie Slade. This performance celebrated the opening of Switched On: a series of shows that shift the sonic dial towards contemporary approaches to music and lighting. This series is brought to us by City Recital Hall: from now until September 30.

Photography : Joe Johnson

Yazmin Lacey appears on stage as an embodiment of R&B and soul, and with that comes a style of voice that wears its heart on its breath. However, as Yazmin opened with Bad Company the second track off her recent debut release, Voice Notes, behind her näive intrepid blossoming of pure talent, was a band of serious professional playing, and to this I refer to a virtuosity in jazz just as much as a relaxed amusement in approach. I don’t want to undermine Yazmin’s professionalism by any stretch, that just wasn’t part of her aura; there was no overreaching past the natural beauty and soul of her lyrical presence to over-colour her words with diminished scales or any of that kind of “jazz”. Yazmin floated her vocals gently, patiently and powerfully in and amongst what was quite a jazz driven soul-funk accompaniment.

Yazmin’s artist taglines often include a description of her as a ‘late’ entry into music, which is somewhat true given her debut EP, Black Moon was only released in 2017. However, when Yazmin played the self-titled track of that EP second last in her set, my ears could have easily placed it on her latest release. Black Moon displayed the mellifluous structure and flow and seamless subtlety of Yazmin’s artistic approach to her music. Yazmin performed Black Moon second last in her set and experiencing it live was a testament to her delayed prodigiousness. There is a mature embodiment to her vocal ability, and her presence. At the halfway point of the show, for three songs, I promise, she held a glass of water without taking a sip – as if so immersed in her storytelling she forgot she was on stage. Transcending is a big word but you get the idea: wherever she went, she took us there. Have a listen to these three tracks and you may get lost too: Sign and Signal, a gentle disco funk track that Yazmin described as a search for life’s simple meanings; From a Lover, a Caribbean dub rumination on the existential feelings of love, and then Eye to Eye, a deep minimal neo-soul dreamscape of the kind of love that appears before you. Then, I believe she took a sip of that glass of water. The structure of Yazmin’s set-list followed the narrative of a great storyteller.

Natalie Slade and IJALE | City Recital Hall. Photography : Joe Johnson

For the duration of the show, Yazmin stood so elegantly still in front of the City Recital Hall’s six story high curtains lit by gold light. Experiencing her on stage was analogous to a visitation of a siren-like figure; a mermaid steeped in songs and beauty from the deep. Sirens, also imagined in myth as half bird, half woman, were believed to draw in ships with their song and bring death to sailors on their approach – Yazmin Lacey though, came to us that night and carried us through and out of life’s vicissitudes, turning her meditations on the pains of life into songs full of transformative love. Towards the end of the show Yazmin played Legacy, a song she described, before playing it, as a song that deals with the loss of her Grandmother – but like the greatest soul singers, grief’s minor chords are transformed by a beat that is funk and a rhythm that drives and dances. Yazmin performed a songbook for love, love of life, love of others, and love of the Self. I saw Erykah Badu perform in Sydney, in 2011, and while watching Yazmin Lacey at City Recital Hall, there was an uncanny presence. Yazmin’s appearance on to the scene may be belated, but her ability to express the lived experience as a singer-songwriter is innate.