Yazmin Lacey is a vocalist originally from London but now based in Nottingham. She made a bit of a splash in 2017 and 2018 with a pair of EPs, Black Moon and When The Sun Dips 90 Degrees, which established her literally as a strong voice in the jazz/R&B/hip hop in the UK. Now she comes back with a third EP, Morning Matters.

Morning Matters is Lacey’s most fully realized vision to date, creating a short collection of songs all written with the idea of making music to start your day to. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to center yourself before you get to work and do what you need to do over the course of the day. Lacey has a silky smooth voice, one that isn’t “big,” but is incredibly controlled and has a nice clean tone to it. She puts it to great use with tremendous melodic instincts as she crafts these jazz-influenced lines with enough of a pop sensibility that you’ll get the hooks stuck in your head all day. To help out the sound of the EP, she’s working with some top notch talent, such as Moses Boyd on drums, Sarah Tandy on keys, and Femi Koleoso and Ife Ogunjobi of Ezra Collective, just to name a few. Together, they are crafting a sound that is incredibly intimate and soulful, something that will really sneak up on you and grow on you as you continue to listen. To tie everything together, Lacey is writing songs that are meant to work as something of a collection of mantras that will get you focused and in a positive headspace so that you can face the day. This is certainly a noble intention, but as anyone that has explored the self-help section of a bookstore can tell you, something like this could easily get out of hand really quickly and become cheesy and disingenuous. Lacey avoids these trappings by keeping things personal – she’s not trying to be a self-help guru as much as she’s writing music to work on these things for herself, and in doing so, her appreciation of the little things in a song like the title track come across as really genuine. When she tells off her haters in “Not Today Mate,” it’s clear she’s got someone particular in mind, and as a result, you’ll be able to picture that same person in your life and realize that you don’t have time for their B.S. today.

Morning Matters is that rare project that sets out to do a thing and then accomplishes it better than you could have hoped. Yazmin Lacey has given us all the perfect way to start each day, with this incredibly soulful jazz/R&B that will warm you up alongside your cup of coffee, help you appreciate all of the little things, and not let the bad things get you down.