Lia Menaker

Lia Menaker
The Genre: noirtronica
The Story: From the Philly class of 2020, I think singer-songwriter Lia Menaker is most deserving of the next available gig at Twin Peaks’ Bang Bang Bar. Gliding to pensive beats and onminous keyboard textures, this compelling vocalist reintroduced herself to the Philly scene this year with a moody, breathtaking EP called I Am Kyrøs.
The Link: liamenaker.bandcamp.com
The Reference Points: Portishead, Amy Winehouse, Twin Peaks - WXPN

Lia Menaker’s voice is utterly spellbinding. Lia is able to power through her lower register with buckets of soul and feather a vibrato to give her a gothic operatic edge. It is key to why her new EP ‘I Am Kyrøs’ works so well. Her voice is the central pillar around which all other instruments arrange themselves around. It works.

Blending together electronica, soul, r&b and rolling the batter in goth flavouring, Lia’s music is by design very difficult to pigeon hole for a new fan to pick up. Her new EP is all about exploring what it is to be human in 2020 and each song has its own distinct flavour. ‘All My Life’ sounds like Zola Jesus and Wendy Rule got together to make a chillout track. ‘Some Kind’ takes the lushest electric piano and adds Bjork ‘Homogenic’ style bass/drum warps (but quieter) throughout. ‘Imprinted’ is more like a free-flowing jam with vocoder snippets bending and twisting across the piece. ‘I feel what I am; I am not what I feel’ opens the track and so begins a clever dissection of how everyday interactions form our thoughts.

Where all the crossroads of Lia Menaker meet are in the experimental chill sector of music. ‘Stranger’ and especially ‘To Be Human’ close out the EP in that vibe. The latter track goes out of its way to detune and robotise Lia’s voice. She is calling on us to click away from the endless scroll of airbrushed photos but her voice becomes less human as the song moves on.

I love it when audio production can tell the story too and this whole EP is a great example of that. If you are looking for r&b vibes made by someone who’d you’d normally expect to be exercising demons in a dark folk or gothic style of music – I strongly recommend giving Lia Menaker a try! - Higher Plain Music