Under the moniker of HelloLightfoot, Jessica Louise Dye creates an inspiringly lush but confessional pop tracks and she’s collected five of them into her sublimely starry-eyed debut EP Every Circle Needs a Center. Produced alongside Kyle McCammon a.k.a. PLUS the collection thrillingly introduces Dye’s solo project, playing in the outskirts of electronica-driven, synth-concussing pop.
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“Nitecap” is a particular fixation, one made ethereal by Dye’s soul-piercing cries, which evoke the kind of haunting beauty of Blouse and Cocteau Twins. While the potent, dance-pop hooks of “Twenty-Seven” and the ecstatic baroque sensibilities of the brooding “Shame,” underscore Dye’s ability to compel such varying sounds into something cohesive.
No other song is more emblematic of this than the trip-hop “Slaughterhouse” — a track that feels lightyears away from album opener “Twenty-Seven” and its sugary elation. Here the industrial electronics reveal themselves eager accompaniements to Dye’s stratospheric, angsty but angelic vocals.
Dye previously was a NYC nightlife orchestrator, someone who’d gained a reputation for shredding guitars, singing, and DJing across the city’s clubs and parties. But her solo project HelloLightfoot has now put her on the frontier of reimagining pop in her image, and the first taste comes with Every Circle Needs a Center.
Every Circle Needs a Center might be Dye’s debut EP but it arrives sounding like the rapturous preview of another set of lightning-rod anthems from an established artist. It’ the kind of EP one easily loses themselves in, whether its the enthralling poetics of Dye’s words, her captivating vocalizations, or the similarly enclosing soundscapes that surround them.
Anyone still aimlessly lamenting pop needs to give Every Circle Needs a Center a listen — we guarantee it’ll be the only thing you’ll find yourself blaring on midnight drives.
“One of the themes throughout this EP lyrically is the battle between decisions that propel us forward and backward. But even a straight line is a circle with an infinite area…a circle is a two-dimensional shape formed. I wanted to reference the two-dimensional world, because when I access intense feelings like fear, anger or even joy for my song-writing, I have the control to make these emotions feel flattened.”
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