Okay Kaya’s New Album, SAP, Is A Concept Album About Consciousness
Kaya Wilkins is a Norwegian-American Berlin-based musician, composer, and artist who records and performs as ‘Okay Kaya’. Francesca Harvey, friend of Speciwomen, reviews Okay Kaya’s newest record, SAP, out now on Jagjaguwar.
Still from Spinal Tap music video. Courtesy of the artist.
Still from Spinal Tap music video. Courtesy of the artist.
On SAP, the third studio album from Okay Kaya, Kaya Wilkins achieves the ambitious feat of a concept album about consciousness. She wrote, performed, engineered, and produced the entire body of work in solitude a year after moving to Berlin and in between art exhibits. When Kaya returned to New York, she wanted friends to “bless the record” and invited collaborators into the final recording process at Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This resulted in an impressive and varied list of guests, including Nick Hakim, Taja Cheek (L’Rain), Adam Green (The Moldy Peaches), Eli Keszler, Aerial East, and more.
The first single, “Spinal Tap,” is a dancey R&B track about cerebrospinal fluids cleansing the brain that Kaya wrote to remind herself of the necessity of sleep. The opening lines, spoken by deem spencer and Michael Wolever, start with “everything was under water,” possibly inspired by the installation Kaya built for the MUNCH Museum in Oslo, Wet Suit, which involved an underwater vocal and harp performance.
“Inside of a Plum” follows with languorous harmonies that call to mind a sleepy psychedelic trip—Kaya wrote the track after trying ketamine therapy. “Jazzercise” calls on the classic wit fans have come to expect from Okay Kaya. Kaya coos like she’s in an 80s exercise video: “I think I’m gonna jazzercise my life away” in one breath, and “did you know / without the ego / there is no narrative / just being here, having been” in the next.
On other songs, Kaya abandons her ego altogether and tells stories from the perspective of characters, most notably Dolly Parton on “Jolene From Her Own Perspective,” and Aphrodite on “Origin Story.” On the standout track “In Regards to Your Tweet,” Kaya addresses a Tweet stating her music had been “slept on.” Halfway through the song, the drums drop out to leave room for Kaya and Adam Green’s vocal harmonies to shine as they sing “it’s my crazy bitch prevention / it’s not just for attention / my mind grows hungry for a better mood / I write a song until I feel something new / so sleep on me if you want to.”
While the subject matter varies track to track, the subtle cross-references between songs makes for an enjoyable full album play-through. Explorations into psychology and metaphors of the physical and natural world abound. It’s the kind of record you can enjoy on first listen or in the background for its catchy synth beats and vocal melodies, but the real reward comes from digging into the lyrics on a third or fourth listen. It’s Kaya’s most comprehensive body of work to date and a leap forward in showcasing her songwriting capabilities.
Still from Spinal Tap music video. Courtesy of the artist.