Intrusive thoughts and mixmaster madness in Liv.e's 'Girl in the Half Pearl'

Liv.e's Girl in the Half Pearl creates space for the voices inside your head — letting them float around, talk to each other and scream into the abyss. Some sweetly whisper messages of prosperity while others shriek without warning. Her acclaimed, shape-shifting 2020 debut, Couldn't Wait to Tell You, emulated a series of journal entries, brought to life by amorphous, gliding harmonies and dissolving melodies. The vocalist's sophomore album prioritizes chaos, pulling elements broadly from jazz, hip-hop, R&B, soul and dance music to encapsulate the multiplicity of growth and the messiness that comes with it.

Since Liv.e's earliest projects, the 2017 debut EP, or 2018's 10.4 ROG-produced , the Dallas-born, L.A.-based artistis her most experimental project yet, which is saying something of this probing artist. While paired her whimsical tone with woozy jazz loops and lo-fi hip hop samples, is more concerned with juxtaposition. The album finds harmony in its mess of influences as Liv.e taps into her inclinations as a DJ — a mixing art that seeks to find congruence where there seemingly isn't any. Liv.e began in high school with Dallas-based Dolfin Records, eventually uploading sets to SoundCloud. Listening to her from more than eight years ago, it's clear that she has always been a master of the seamless transition – whether it's slowing down a Madlib-produced beat to sharply land on Knxwledge's more buoyant ones or pairing Jordan Rakei's "Chris Dave + Bob Marley" with Fugees' "How Many Mics." It's no coincidence that much of the album is produced by Los Angeles-based beatmaker , who was a presence in Liv.e's early mixes.