A LITTLE VENGEANCE

The Toronto singer channels post-breakup blues into acidic alt-R&B. Note to self: Never get on Jessie Reyez’s bad side. On “MADAME JOYCE’S INTERLUDE”, a spoken-word snippet that appears early in her fourth album A LITTLE VENGEANCE, Reyez talks about finding another woman in her boyfriend’s phone and changing one of the digits to kibosh any future booty calls. And that dude got off easy. A LITTLE VENGEANCE sees the Toronto alt-R&B singer sift through the emotional wreckage of dysfunctional relationships with CSI-level forensic detail and cutting colour commentary, be it in the acidic post-breakup blues of “N.Y.F.F.” (as in “Don’t call me/I’m not your fuckin’ friend) or the sassy Amy Winehouse-worthy kiss-off “99%”. Reyez also doesn’t shy away from training her crosshairs on herself. See: the cheeky, self-deprecating funk track “FUCK YOU JESSIE”. But with the closing statement “EGO ATROPHY”, she finally finds the inner peace she craves in a dreamy swirl of ’90s trip-hop textures and sampled sound-bite wisdom courtesy of Bob Marley.