It makes perfect sense for a dance-pop artist to eventually produce a space-themed album of some sort. Club lighting resembles stars and cosmic rays reflecting off the super-massive structures of the cosmos, only drawn in and wrapped around a crowd like the drapes of a baldachin, under which a fog of ecstasy can condense into an antigravity field, through which you can swim up and grasp the tails of passing comets. UK singer Rose Gray is practiced at capturing and bottling this intoxicating ether, but what's particularly delightful about her latest EP, Higher Than the Sun, is that even when she is punching through exosphere, she never renounces the physicality her sound is rooted in, nor the tactile desires of the people who receive it. Through out the album, Rose permits herself to become passionately entwined in heady and fleshed-out forms that have their own distinct scents, temperatures, and saturation points, coming alive in a moment of concentration with the potence of each presence in order to commune with them like a lover, like a fighter, and like a friend. The grooves on Higher spread through the extremities in a manner that is almost skeletal, teaching your body how to move and predicting the patterns of your feet before you've even acknowledged your own drive to dance. This powerful and persuasive mentorship is undoubtedly present on opener "Ecstasy," as well as the circular pressure sweep of the disco-divinity cascade "Prettier Than You" with funky blushing basslines and tugging beckon of moody vocal inflections. "Promise Me" has a touch of escapist glory to its plunging and breaching melodies that sheers upon a rosy shimmer like dolphins racing at dusk through a lapping veneer of open water, and "Sun Comes Up" is an easy unwind of a closer, where a soulful whisper of melodic tresses and a soothing massage of therapeutic house grooves relieve you of any tension your body retains after a full night on the dancefloor. Higher Than the Sun might not be exactly out of this world, but it most definitely contains more joy than one planet could possibly handle.
