She has been a fixture of Irish music for several years and sold out venues nationwide so, after a succession of well-received singles and EPs, it’s high time that we hear Lyra’s long-awaited debut album. The Cork native, whose real name is Laura McNamara, has already proved her mettle as a powerhouse vocalist. Comparisons to Florence Welch are the norm, although one newspaper has referred to her as “Beyoncé with a Cork accent”.
Lyra ploughs a more dance-pop-oriented furrow, though; the album’s opening track, America, sets the tone with slick, cutting-edge pop production, while songs such as the booming Drink Me Up and You are distinctly Rihannaesque.
The standout track Naked, which began as an imagined collaboration with David Guetta, is both sensual and frivolous and harnesses a 1990s house energy, while a glittering cover of Stevie Nicks’s Edge of Seventeen with the DJ and producer John Gibbons becomes a vibrant club anthem for millennials.
Dynamism and vitality abound here, but the lyrical content is undeniably one-note; most of these songs are about heartbreak, falling in love or general relationship struggles, and lines such as “Hold me close/ You told me I’d always be the one, then you let me go” and “You left my heart out in the cold/ I can’t break any more because of you” are disappointingly boilerplate.
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Queen and Chess are outliers in that regard, the former a dramatic self-empowering anthem, the latter a scathing critique of the music industry’s hypocrisy and double standards. The synthy, soulful All Over Now treads a similar line, a bitter kiss-off to an ex that sees her vow: “You had your chance, but it’s all over now.”
Given Lyra’s entertaining, droll onstage charisma, it would have been nice to hear more of her witty personality in these songs rather than a glut of predictable lovelorn paeans. It appears that Lyra’s best is yet to come, but this confident step forward shows she can go toe to toe with her pop contemporaries on the international scene.
