LEYA can find the beauty in any sound, no matter how unsettling. The New York-based duo of harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist/vocalist Adam Markiewicz revealed as much in an interview earlier this year, when they were asked about their most rewarding recent listening experiences. Donovan described the joys of hearing roosters screeching at a farm in Atlanta; Markiewicz enthused about the chaos of the New York City subway trains. “Their sound holds every buzz and slap and orchestral moment you might care to hear,” he said. “There is music everywhere, but especially there.”
The duo’s new mini-album I Forget Everything reflects this disposition toward close listening. It also reveals their knack for wringing tranquility out of overwhelming gloom. Since their 2018 debut, LEYA have used a simple palette. Donovan plays a uniquely detuned harp, which lends delicate unease to every track; rather than the empyrean grace the instrument typically connotes, her playing is ghostly and tense. Markiewicz’s contributions are suitably opaque and foggy, his vocals billowing over the ashes of the duo’s damaged strings. On I Forget Everything, they occasionally weave in distant washes of ambience or other smoggy electronics, but they largely stick to their chosen instruments, furthering their single-minded search for complicated beauty.
“Weaving,” which braids a tense and discordant harp arpeggio around the gentle swell of Markiewicz’s vocals and violin, feels like an especially effective version of their sound. It’s gentle but unsteady; the warmth of Markiewicz’s voice serves as a guide through the treacherous landscape of the strings. Pillowy, yet otherworldly and intense, it’s an example of dream pop that echoes the surreal, unearthly atmosphere of more upsetting REM cycles.
A pair of short pieces later on the record show what happens when the duo pushes further into abstraction and uncertainty. On “Baited,” Markiewicz’s meditative vocal line is wrapped in a delicate electronic loop that shimmers and shifts without really fully resolving into a proper melody. “Fake” uses a dreary, sparse harp figure as the accompaniment for an ambient ballad, both achingly emotional and upsettingly vertiginous—it’s a little like what might be revealed if you peeled back the layers of a Cocteau Twins arrangement to its barest form. It presents a possible future direction for the band—they’ve always somewhat playfully understood their sound as a sort of pop music, but the most compelling moments on I Forget Everything happen when they abandon conventional structures for something a little stranger.
But amid the unease, LEYA find ways to let light in. It’s there in the opening moments of the record, a weightless bit of ambience that flutters like a roll of tulle unspooling in the wind. Even when Donovan’s harp is at its most discordant, there’s something soothingly intimate about it, the sustain of each plucked string trailing off in a way that feels reassuringly consistent—as if left untouched it might just keep ringing forever. LEYA say that I Forget Everything was written from a place of “confusion and exhaustion,” and that’s certainly audible, but it’s deceptively hopeful music too. There’s a sense that they’ll find some peace from the turbulence, if they just keep looking for it.
