LOS ANGELES – Zsela leans into the ebb and flow of uncertainty and invites listeners to do the same on her debut album “Big For You.”
The album, written over four years, follows Zsela’s 2020 EP “Ache of Victory,” which she describes as “a mark of time.”
“I’m connected to it as it will always be a part of my story, but I’m excited to tell new stories with this album,” said Zsela. “I was working a lot on myself and this music. Delayed. And I feel really fortunate that I took this time to get the songs to where I wanted them to be, and I’m really excited about where they ended up,” she said.
For Zsela, working on “Big For You” was a test of trusting her instincts and pushing beyond her comfort zone, both sonically and vocally.
“I really began to experiment with my voice in ways that would dictate my writing. I had a character that I sang with that came from a day where I just wasn’t feeling my voice. So, I thought, let me try something different. Really different,” says Zsela about a character on the album. When asked where the character appears, she simply says, “I think it’s more fun to leave it up to the listener to discover.”
Zsela has a rich and attractive voice. Its warm tone intertwines with upbeat, dreamlike melodies and instrumentals, especially heard on tracks like “Fire Excape” and “Not Your Angel.”
“I feel like I’ve established confidence just in the practice itself of experimenting and not being so precious and opening myself up to people and ideas and really trying to practice listening to myself and where I want to go and out, like the noise of the world,” she says.
But as she embarked on the metamorphosis, Zsela says she had a strong desire to seek “lightness, fun and levity” throughout the process.
“I really tried to bring that into the room every time I was with myself and working on figuring out what I wanted to say,” she said. “It’s like opening up, letting go and experiencing.”
“Big For You” was an opportunity to see how far she could go, cementing her creative confidence and creating a charming, energetic album full of musical tension and release.
“My friend described it as a sweaty album, like, it feels like you’re tense and hot,” she says.
“Big For You” means ‘I love you’ to Zsela, and the album is about love and all its complexities.
“The great thing is the space that we fill and occupy within love. Like being ‘full of you’ and ‘full of you’ and this complexity in the magnitude of this space that we occupy and fill,” said the artist.
The Brooklyn native is taking listeners on an adventure that begins with the fantasy-filled “Lily of the Nile” and ends with “Play,” a song that she says “ends with this question of love.”
“It’s been a way to leave (the album) open and hopefully make you want to restart it to see what the response is or if there is any.”
She has once again teamed up with Frank Ocean and FKA Twigs collaborator Daniel Aged to produce, alongside Gabe Wax.
“I kept my world of collaborators quite intimate. And it’s not to say that I don’t want to invite more, but I think intimacy has really built a lot of trust and that’s been really important in creating that and being able to experiment and find your way back home. ”
Zsela has performed several shows with artists such as Caroline Polacheck and Arooj Aftab. But this summer she will embark on her first headlining tour and hopes to meet listeners who identify with her artistic talent.
“I’m excited to see who’s in these rooms,” she said. “I’m excited to play these songs live. The whole time I was making this album, I was thinking about playing them live.”
“Big For You” is scheduled for release on Friday. Zsela hopes listeners absorb the melodies, lyrics and arrangements while driving with the top down.
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