Uche Yara – ‘Honey’ review: woozy and sizzling with ideas

One year after her debut single ‘Www She Hot’, Uche Yara remains difficult to pin down. The Austrian multi-instrumentalist’s early tracks have darted between indie, R&B and psych rock, led by a similarly dextrous vocal: spanning airy falsettos on ‘Www She Hot’, pained groans on ‘homesick’ and playful vocalisations on ‘ZUU (Zoo)’. Following her fun, saturated EP ‘Golden Days, ‘Honey’ represents another left-turn: a more restrained, singer-songwriter-facing collection. While it feels insubstantial as an EP, it is not short on imagination or style.

READ MORE: Uche Yara belongs to the stage

‘Honey’ centres on simple guitar-and-vocal arrangements, but Yara’s production teems with experimental touches, textural contrasts and spatial quirks. During the drums and plucked guitar opening ‘Dead2me’, rimshots ring out and get reversed, while sharp reverb changes give the impression the studio is suddenly shrinking and growing. Elsewhere on ‘Tell My Mama’, the gauzy synths and melodic vocalisations are punctured by glitched electronics, metallic scrapes and distant screams.

The EP’s most unusual element is Yara’s voice itself. While she often changes it with electronic processing, like the heavy AutoTune on ‘Dead2me’, it does plenty of shapeshifting on its own: the ethereal delivery on ‘Honey, Come Find Me’, the spat opening of ‘Backstage Again’, and the rich, trembling baritone on ‘Not Far From Home’. Poignantly, while ‘Backstage Again’ embraces contemporary R&B vocals, ‘Not Far From Home’ recalls The Ink Spots: progenitors of that sound from a near-century ago.

Lyrically, however, the EP often feels under-formed. ‘Not Far From Home’ reflects feeling adrift, revisiting her project ‘Yesterday I was In London // Homesick’, but is comparatively vague: “I wonder if it feels like,” she croons, “sentimental now.” The exception is the more complex ‘Backstage Again’, reckoning with how the fresh excitement of performing – “my heroes on a big stage / but now I’m a hero too” – can be deflated by old-fashioned loneliness.

The biggest issue with ‘Honey’ concerns coherency. While there’s an overall air of melancholy – ‘Honey’ feels like a natural counterpoint to the more upbeat ‘Golden Days’ – it lacks enough thematic and sonic focus to feel like a fully realised EP. Equally, it doesn’t commit to all-out eclectism: ‘Tell My Mama’ bridges the chasm between ‘Not Far From Home’ and ‘Backstage Again’, but those aesthetic leaps are part of Yara’s appeal.

‘Honey’ may have its flaws, but it points towards an exciting future: one where Yara takes the reins on a longer-form project, giving enough space to her experimental leanings, theatricality and range.