Haley Blais puts a new voice to a familiar sound
A 20-something power indie pop singer from Canada
Haley Blais is on one of my algorithmic music discovery playlists this morning. Specifically, “Rob the Original” from her 2020 album Below the Salt that came up. This track takes some time to warm up; we do hear a dream rock sound, lot of reverb (War On Drugs-esque… it’s on the mind); then Blais contributes a very different voice than the raspier, gruffer vocals you might expect with this type of instrumental. Keyboards and the quality of her vocals come out more in the next track “So Funny”:
Here’s an interesting excerpt from an interview following the release of Below the Salt:
You’ve describe Below the Salt as a coming-of-age with no real coming of age. Can you say more about that?
That’s a hard question, because yeah, all the music I have written up to now, there is like this twinge of nostalgia. I think this album kind of caps that off, and I’m ready to move on and make music that has different tones to it, that doesn’t as naturally go towards this, I don’t know what another word would be, ‘not-nostalgia’ really resonates with me.
The main difference I hear in Blais’s music since Below the Salt — and it makes me really excited for what she’ll do next — is that her vocals take on a more crystalline quality, where they might have previously been drowned out by instrumentals — but simultaneously manage to retain their marbled, scuffed-at-points character. For example, in “Coolest f*cking b*tch in town”, released this March, we really hear a much better balance and interaction between her vocals and the instrumentals, allowing the lyrics to come through.
Blais’s willingness to break from nostalgia and sound tradition to invent something new will define and re-define her career, because her voice already has enough contrast with what I’d expect from the singer with these instrumentals to give a “pleasant surprise” factor.