The high priestess of the neo-soul underground Jazz Calls Home, in her latest release, “Wyrdd,” rewrites the rules of what a single can be. It turns out that her singles are not even really songs in the traditional sense but rather exorcisms that feel conjured rather than composed.
From the instant the slab of music starts, you’re not so much listening to it as sucked into a vortex. Eerie, layered synths and warped effects set the scene for a haunting vibe, as cinematic as it is intimate. There’s a feeling of something moving, and you’re right in the middle of its waking. Then Jazz’s voice comes in spectral, gentle, wounded with distortion, like a faint memory half-remembered. She doesn’t push. Jazz’s delivery hovers like an invitation. Each word of the lyrics is like a page ripped from a journal meant never to be read aloud. In its tides of solitude, identity and transformation ripple through the track, not yelled but uttered in a hush, as if they are truths too delicate to keep in harsh lights.
“Wyrdd” doesn’t follow those rules. It sprawls like a fever dream, one wave of glitchy, ever-escalating production building to the peak of disorienting chaos. There’s no real beginning or end, just an ongoing feeling of being in motion and swept along on somebody else’s emotional storm.
But the most striking note is the beauty Jazz wrings from that chaos. The dissonance reflects emotional dislocation, the jaggedness of coming into oneself, and the aftermath of trauma. “Wyrdd” doesn’t provide easy catharsis. It simply includes candor, and that hits deeper.