How do you emulate the multi-faceted layers of emotion that hotel rooms bring? Since 2014's Black Is the Color, Lucette has experienced her fair share of movement, displacement and impermanence. Deluxe Hotel Room holds this flux against a search for internal stasis to create a record rooted in Americana.
With a steady piano rhythm, the title track lavishes in Lucette's moody vocals. The story here is one of uneasy success: with the expense of the hotel room juxtaposed over more authentic, less luxurious recollections. The ever-catchy "California" sprawls into West coast bliss, continuing a narrative soaked in transition. Be wary of what looks beautiful, Lucette compels, for there is always going to be longing.
In between upheavals are occasional tethers. Lucette, who hails from Edmonton, uses Deluxe Hotel Room to declare that she is her own anchor. "Talk to Myself" pulls a struggle with mental illness into an expansive ballad. "Angel" serves as a love-letter dance break, while "Fly to Heaven" brings organ and saxophone together with a continuation of religious imagery. The influences of gospel music come and go with graceful fluidity, nodding to the Americana canon that Lucette is inspired by.
Where Black Is the Color was a debut of haunting folk-noir, Deluxe Hotel Room is a collection of emotive ballads that reveal an artist on the go who isn't afraid to make space for herself. As Lucette describes love as "a slow burn, baby, ignites the night," the same can be said of this languid, sizzling record.
(Rock Creek Music / Thirty Tigers)With a steady piano rhythm, the title track lavishes in Lucette's moody vocals. The story here is one of uneasy success: with the expense of the hotel room juxtaposed over more authentic, less luxurious recollections. The ever-catchy "California" sprawls into West coast bliss, continuing a narrative soaked in transition. Be wary of what looks beautiful, Lucette compels, for there is always going to be longing.
In between upheavals are occasional tethers. Lucette, who hails from Edmonton, uses Deluxe Hotel Room to declare that she is her own anchor. "Talk to Myself" pulls a struggle with mental illness into an expansive ballad. "Angel" serves as a love-letter dance break, while "Fly to Heaven" brings organ and saxophone together with a continuation of religious imagery. The influences of gospel music come and go with graceful fluidity, nodding to the Americana canon that Lucette is inspired by.
Where Black Is the Color was a debut of haunting folk-noir, Deluxe Hotel Room is a collection of emotive ballads that reveal an artist on the go who isn't afraid to make space for herself. As Lucette describes love as "a slow burn, baby, ignites the night," the same can be said of this languid, sizzling record.