EP Review: FatalAttraction by LÉA THE LEOX

The Brockton-raised singer returns with a sophomore EP that follows one attraction from first night to last call. She sings every stage with calm, and she has no interest in pretending she’s sorry.

Courtesy of Sxlva Records.

Leon Silva played saxophone with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones for eight years before joining Justin Timberlake’s Regiment Horns. The records his daughter remembers, though, are the ones he put on for the morning drives to school in Brockton, Massachusetts, where Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys and Minnie Riperton did the early shaping. The voice that grew up inside those drives went to Berklee as a voice principal with a music business degree on the side, moved to Los Angeles after COVID collapsed the plan, and has passed through Mariah Carey’s Christmastime choir, a Pandora deal that put her on a Times Square billboard, and co-signs from Elton John and Stevie Wonder. LÉA THE LEOX (Mya Silva, pronounced Lay-Uh the Leo) took all that seriously enough to put it to use on songs this small. On FatalAttraction, she moves from the first night with a stranger to two people making each other sick, sung at one level throughout no matter which end of it she’s on.

She works close to the mic and parks most of it in her conversational range. No belting, no runs that push past what a melody needs; you can hear the Alicia Keys patience cut with a little of the Minnie Riperton lift. On “IFY,” she spends half a verse laying out a preamble you already know, she’s been on the road, been on the run, looking for somebody to love her right, and she talks it through at the same pitch she’d use to tell you anything. Then the hook:

“What do you know, I found you, you
I found you, babe.”

The melody comes to her.

The same matter-of-fact delivery fires both directions across the rest of the EP. She tells the shy partner on “OpenYourEyes,” “Put your feelings to the side,” and a minute later, “tonight’s the night, oh, let me change your life, lil baby,” making an invitation and a business case at once. The voice flips direction on “Fatal,” where “I reached my limit, lost my mind, and I can’t afford to feel this pain” comes out as plain as the invitation was. Over on “YouAndMe,” a fading partner gets “Let’s act our age, girl,” with no fear and no begging underneath it, the kind of line you say to a partner you’ve already broken up with in your head. Mya Silva walks between invitation and goodbye and carries a single tempo across both.

The EP mostly puts the camera on two people in a room. One song breaks that. On “YouAndMe,” Mya’s circle walks in and does what close company does after watching a thing go south long enough: “I told all my friends/And they don’t like the way you talk to me/Said I should walk away/Block you on everything,” which is advice she takes in and ignores. “But they don’t know my pain,” she answers, colder on the page than the delivery suggests. They’ve given her permission to leave, and the permission goes unused. Leaving would cost more than staying does, and Mya has already done that haymaking.

Three production teams make the EP and it somehow all plays from one room. Billy Blunt’s work on “IFY” and “YouAndMe” sets up a soft-lit R&B that gives LÉA room to talk instead of showboat. “OpenYourEyes” from Baca & Brandn is the loosest of the four, the kind of beat that lets you hear the couch they made it on. Jeff Shum and Alan Good Parker tighten the drums only on “Fatal” (the one song where the writing names what’s wrong in plain English), and the singing plays it quiet against the noise.

Early in “IFY,” Mya lists reasons she shouldn’t be in a stranger’s apartment (work in the morning, calls she’s ignoring) before she names the one reason she’s there anyway and tells him, “we’ll work it out in the morning.” She has not thought it through, doesn’t know his name, and is already past being surprised by any of it. Further into the EP, with the cable frayed and the trouble naming itself, the joke from the opening plays in a lower key, and she is still speaking in the same one. The morning never does get worked out.

Favorite Track(s): “IFY,” “YouAndMe,” “Fatal”