Music is a simple yet complex medium. For some, its enjoyment is dependent on a series of pleasing sounds sequentially following each other and repeating. For some, the sounds serve primarily as a background against which the poetics of lyrics are heard. Some artists, however, bring visceral elements into their creations and tease their audience to play both audience and co-creator in the experience. With her debut album, Robyn L appears as a loaded cloud beyond the fog of mechanical music, and her showers promise to flood every metaphoric space.
Bearing the title, “Crying Room” the offering by the 22-year-old singer-songwriter, producer, and actress is a sonic treat. The multi-genre project features elements that immediately invoke the tapping of one’s foot or nodding of the head, but when one sits with the greater world of the sounds comprising each track, their mind necessarily wanders across the cinematic landscape that arises. All this is achieved with 10 songs that run for just under half an hour in total.
Adding her name to the list of Botswana’s noteworthy exports to the world, Robyn L is currently based on the west coast of the United States of America and making waves in her own right. Working from Los Angeles, the self-defined black alternative artist says she built the “Crying Room” project with the intention to create a space where “the human condition and fiction intertwine, and where raw emotions are laid bare.” This is clearly executed throughout the album as its thematic selection and compositions tend to lure the listener in with pulsating simplicity before drum lines and strings uniquely animate each track.
Listening to Robyn L’s music, it is immediately apparent that her influences stem from indie, pop, alt-rock, to 90s grunge, classical music, and hip-pop among others. “I wanted to create something that felt otherworldly yet familiar,” says the young singer, adding “where each song could exist in its own space but still be connected to the larger emotional journey.” While a banjo appears alongside bell sounds on one song, an 808 kick or drone synth drives a selection of others, all while the songstress’ voice floats and darts in and out of pockets of each beat. Although she opens the album with the lyric: “Need a new prescription, blurry vision got me scatter-brained”, the precision with which this offering has been compiled is a testament to the labour that went into its creation. Mikaela Gatto, Lester Wong, Naomi Li, and Maz Univerze join Robyn L as co-producers on a project that whets an appetite for frivolity while and feeding curiosities of love, pain, regret, joy and sensuality.
While receiving her 2024 MTV Video Music Award for Best Afrobeats, South African musical sensation, Tyla implored the global music market to acknowledge that African musicians make more than just one genre, and lumping them all under one title is a disservice to their craft. Unlink Tyla, however, Robyn L’s music is African due to its creator but universal in its execution and sounds. Simply listening to the album, and with no prior knowledge of the young muso’s voice, one would need to be clairvoyant to say that it is the work of a young African – and that adds to its uniqueness. In her “Crying Room”, Robyn L invites everyone to ride the waves of emotion and emerge changed. This debut offering is an outstanding success.
