There was a long wait between Zella Day’s first major label album and her second. Between releasing Kicker in 2015 and Sunday in Heaven in 2022, Day put out a handful of singles and EPs in various styles as she tried on a whole host of musical identities and personas.
All that experimentation means that by the time Day finally came to make her second record she was ready to make a much more varied, interesting and mature album than she did the first time out.
Kicker showed throughout that Day was an incredibly exciting songwriter and singer; it has great pop songs on it like East of Eden and Sweet Ophelia, complete with huge choruses and melodies, but quite often on the album it feels like the production and the music is holding her back a little. It can feel a little over-produced. It can feel very safe and not very adventurous. I saw her live around the time and the songs had much more impact, energy and life. Even in the months after the album was released, she was already exploring new ways of presenting those songs. It’s always felt like she wanted to be more than just a singer of standard pop songs.
Sunday in Heaven expands on that aspiration by incorporating a much wider range of tones, styles, genres, influences and instruments. There are still those incredibly catchy choruses and melodies all over the album, but they are joined by a more interesting musical palette. Day is given more room to sing with her whole voice, utilising her whole range, rather than just the shrillest parts of her register.
Some of the album sounds like it could have come straight out of the 1970s. Am I Still Your Baby is a West-Coast singer-songwriter throwback which blends the sheen of Fleetwood Mac with the grit of Janis Joplin, whilst I Don’t Know How to End is a great, sweeping Laurel Canyon ballad. Dance For Love is a blue-eyed funk track which is a direct descendant of Leo Sayer’s 1976 classic You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.
Girls, meanwhile, is a psychedelic swirl of modern Americana. A disorienting trip to the circus through the desert at Halloween, this track invokes the title of Day’s last EP - Where Does the Devil Hide - more than any of the songs on that EP even did. We are sent straight upstairs from the devil-ish to the heavenly, as the next track Golden is another funk throwback delivered on a dreamy bed of beautiful backing vocals, guitars, keys, bass and drums.
Maybe these two songs show off the best of Day’s range as an artist, the darkness and light that she exhibits variously in her work, and the way she can embody them both. This album, far more than her first record, really does feel like you’re listening to an artist at work, not just a singer who has written a collection of songs. There is a care and construction to these arrangements like there was on that first album, but there is so much more freedom here, as well. So much more space for her to stretch out and explore her music and for that music to breathe. There is much more to take in and to come back to time and time again. There is more soul and spirit in this album. It doesn’t all work - some of the songs feel a little flat - but when it takes off it really soars.
It was a long time between Kicker and Sunday in Heaven, but it was well worth the wait.
Notable Album Releases
Arctic Monkeys - The Car
Beyoncé - Renaissance
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe You
Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter
Harry Styles - Harry’s House
Lizzo - Special
Mitski - Laurel Hell
Sabrina Carpenter - emails i can’t send
Taylor Swift - Midnights
Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
Up next: We’re staying in Heaven with The Rolling Stones, plus new music from Boygenius, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, Mitski and even The Beatles.