Album Review: Teal Dreams by Yazmin Lacey
Teal Dreams reimagines freedom not as a grand statement but as a series of small, deliberate gestures. In doing so, Yazmin Lacey continues to carve out her own space—teal, tender, and defiantly hers.
In her second full‑length, Yazmin Lacey conjures a world between waking life and reverie—“Somewhere between dreams and reality/It’s a revolutionary act when black girls dream.” That line appears early on the title track, but it feels like the record’s thesis: a declaration that making space for rest is itself a form of resistance. She sings those words with a patient glide, stretching “dream” over the bar line so that the note hangs in the air like a held breath. As acoustic guitars pool around her, she admits that she’s been “moving restless when I try to sleep,” and the tension between restlessness and restoration animates what follows. Lacey spends Teal Dreams refusing to let her quietness be misconstrued as passivity. Her songs are tactile, often sensual, but they are also reminders that self‑possession can be a political gesture.
Lacey summons the project “a gallery of gestures,” and that feels apt. Teal Dreams arrives two years after the breakout success of Voice Notes. With this newest release, Lacey returns with a soulful, fearless second album rich in real-life storytelling, composed amid late-night reflections and a last-minute trip to Thailand. Pairing that up with her trademark blend of soul, ska, lover’s rock, and indie, she steers into new emotional territory. Lovers‑rock is a clear touchstone. On “Wallpaper,” she leans into the genre’s lilting feel; a bass line snakes like breath against skin while she narrates a dance‑floor rendezvous: “Grindin’ on your lap/Sweat beads on your cheek.” The chorus, with its playful promise to wash her partner’s fro the next morning and the repeated line “Rubbing off the wallpaper,” turns a domestic scene into an erotic one. A piece in whynow notes that “Wallpaper” reimagines lovers‑rock through Lacey’s Caribbean heritage, and her phrasing spotlights that update—she sings “both knees aching when we whine and flow” with a joyful sigh, making desire sound like labor and leisure at once.
Growth is one of the album’s primary metaphors, appearing in both ecological and internal forms. “Wild Things” is a hymn to the dirt, rooted in a groove as deep as the soil it describes. Lacey conjures a subterranean world where “down in the deep soil they seem to know it all”; she speaks to tree bark, roots, and canopy and asks, almost pleading, “Won’t you show me where the wild things are”. Her vocal here is wide‑eyed and reverent, almost childlike, and the arrangement mirrors her wonder: strings flutter like leaves, and hand percussion rustles like undergrowth. On “Grace (Reflective Dub),” the growth is personal. Overdubbed-out chords she repeats “If I wait for me/Slowly, surely/My time won’t pass me by,” and “I should give myself some grace” becomes an instruction and prayer at the same time.
Where those tracks seek connection with nature or self, “Crutch” and “Rear View” are grounded in relationships strained by need and distance. “Crutch” begins with a confession: “I don’t know how to go on without you/…I’m clinging on like chewing gum stuck to the sole of my shoe”. She admits that she relies on “small pleasures” and “little kinks in my architecture” to fill the void, and her voice carries both shame and defiance; in the chorus, she turns the phrase “It’s that crutch” into a seesaw rhythm as she lists two‑, four‑, and six‑week increments. There’s a hint of humor in the way she stacks the time signatures, but the repetition also mimics addiction. “Rear View” describes an ending so tentative that both parties are still watching one another in the mirror: “Didn’t we share sunlight before it cooled?” she asks, before urging, “Let’s tell the truth before we go changing lane.” Her delivery is almost conversational, as if trying to coax honesty from someone who isn’t ready to leave.
Lacey is at her best when she renders social realism as emotional architecture. “Love Is Like the Ghetto” is built on a mid‑tempo riddim, and over it she draws an analogy between community and romance. In the chorus, she sings, “Love is like the ghetto/Learning when to let go/Famble, stick or settle/Hustle and we keep hope.” The image of love as a precarious, crowded space could feel heavy‑handed, but she keeps it light by emphasizing the last word in each line; there’s a smile in the way she draws out her words. The second verse acknowledges that the ghetto is “unforgiving, with no corners to hide” before asserting that love is “stronger than pride,” which gives the line vulnerability. “Ribbons” finds her reconnecting with an old friend. “Friendship’s a big old forest/I’m sorry it burned” she sings, and later, “I’m not the same Yazmin/I took some falls but I built.” The gentle regret in her tone makes the offer of a “branch of olives” feel like a genuine olive branch. Her vocal phrasing is patient here; she holds “forgiveness” for an extra beat, as if waiting for a response, and a plaintive saxophone curls around her like smoke.
On “Worlds Apart,” she examines the paradox of hyper‑connected loneliness. The first verse catalogues intimacy, “Even though I know how you take your eggs … even though we hit a streak of three hundred days,” but in the chorus she confesses, “Next to you but I don’t know where we are.” The arrangement pairs an airy guitar line with a clipped drum loop, mirroring the sense of being together and separate. “No Promises” is flirtation as a self‑destructive sport. She admits to throwing “kites into the wind” and stepping on “ice that’s paper thin”; later, she calls her lover “a cigarette I’d smoke until the end” and claims true love is dead before insisting she “ain’t stopping yet.” The writing flirts with cliché (cigarettes and thin ice are familiar metaphors), but the melodic line, which rises unexpectedly on “wave,” gives the chorus a sense of weightlessness. “Two Steps,” one of the album’s singles, harnesses anger. Lacey’s voice is deliberately pointed when she tells a partner, “If you’re going two steps forward and three steps back … you can be on your way.” She called the song “sharp, unapologetic and overdue,” and that sharpness shows in both the lyric—“Little bitch I’m a shining star”—and the elastic bass line co‑written with Miles Clinton James. If there’s a flaw, it’s that the song’s bridge (“You know I’m a mystery … times up, you’re history”) lapses into generic kiss‑off language; Lacey’s anger is more compelling when it’s specific.
“Ain’t I Good for You,” early previewed as a standalone single, inverts the dynamic. The leading hook (“Ain’t I good for you?/I’m that sweet, that salt, that taste”) is part boast, part question. Lacey sings “Lucky you I came your way” like a wink, but there’s a tenderness beneath her swagger. The song’s arrangement is buoyant, built on handclaps and brass florishes, but it’s also a gentle lesson in mutual care: she asks her partner to “take a look around” and appreciate the relationship. Taking seriously the instructions to treat “Lucky You” as the sound of a man learning to hold love gently, one could argue this song flips that perspective—the man is lucky because he’s being taught how to value someone without defence or disguise. Lacey’s phrasing here has a painter’s patience rather than a preacher’s urgency.
The album expands on community and return. “Water,” a duet with TYSON, opens with a voicemail about missed calls and childcare before settling into a mid‑tempo groove. She sings, “You and I know that life will change/If we act cold we freeze and break … we’re flowing water taking different shapes,” foregrounding the malleability of friendship. Each singer takes a verse. Lacey confesses she feels “like I’m 25” despite her friend’s grown‑up life, while TYSON admits she’s afraid her domestic stability might bore Lacey. Their voices blend like currents, neither dominating the other. “Longest Way Around” closes the record with introspection. Lacey wonders if the detours in her life were necessary: “Maybe I was always coming home/I just took the longest way around,” and acknowledges that she had to “surrender” and “break out of my shell.” The song edges close to self‑help speak when she sings “I got it wrong to get it right,” but her gentle vibrato and the interplay of acoustic guitar and piano keep it grounded.
The songwriting mostly avoids the traps of self‑help and manifesto because she roots her words in lived detail: washing a lover’s hair, knowing how someone likes their eggs, climbing for sunlight. The production, shaped by Miles Clinton James, Barney Lister, and others, is consistently warm, balancing analog soul with digital embellishments. Lacey’s voice remains the draw—its subtle vibrato, effortless slides, and painterly sense of timing give each song the feel of a slow brushstroke across a canvas. The record’s expansive palette and lyrical intimacy justify the high mark, even if a few songs lean on familiar tropes. Teal Dreams reimagines freedom not as a grand statement but as a series of small, deliberate gestures, and in doing so, Yazmin Lacey continues to carve out her own space—teal, tender, and defiantly hers.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite tracks: “Wallpaper,” “Wild Things,” “Ribbons”