Lexa Gates, a Queens native , spent ten hours inside a glass box in Union Square, making self-imposed isolation performance art and a statement on visibility. Now, she’s trying to give us sound to that spectacle with her new single, “Alone (in the Box).”
“Alone (in the Box)” similarly refuses to be boxed in, like Gates herself. It’s a slow-burning, sultry jazz confessional, in the spirit of the smoke-fogged soul of Sade and the naked storytelling of East Coast hip-hop.” Over scattered, trippy keys and a bassline that thumps like a heart, Gates’s voice feels close and far away, as if she’s whispering secrets from the other side of a glass wall. She half-speaks and half-sings her way through lyrics that stab aching with loneliness yet streaked with an indelible power.
If “Elite Vessel” is a self-portrait on the move, “alone (in the box)” is when the Gates catches a glimpse of her reflection and chooses to sit with it. Audiences who admire Amy Winehouse’s confessional croon or Lauryn Hill’s poetic intuition will find themselves in comfortable territory. But with her genre-bending vision and fearless vulnerability, Gates ensures there’s no home quite like the one she’s making.