Ally Bakst is at the beginning of her professional musical journey, but you can’t tell. Her new single “Mystery Girl” doesn’t sound like a blooming novice just now awakening to her creative powers but, instead, comes across as a near-peak work from a veteran singer/songwriter/performer. Her creative partner in this journey, producer and respected composer Mark Vogel, provides Bakst with an ideal creative foil who helps her realize the song’s ambitions.
Bakst isn’t attempting to remake the songwriting wheel with “Mystery Girl”, but the single has undoubted freshness. Pouring old wine into new bottles is an all-too-often underappreciated skill, but Bakst has fine-tuned that gift early in her performing journey and it’s easy to envision her only getting better and better with future releases. It’s a thorough pop jewel, polished to a high shine, yet never lacking the flesh and blood talent that’s needed to push the single over the top.
The track opens with haunting piano, wreathed in effects, but those effects never neutralize its melodic potency. Bakst is fully in tune with the aural landscape that these initial moments create and, as the song expands, she stays with it each step of the way. Anyone hoping for ostentatious displays of instrumental prowess should look elsewhere.
It’s built around light instrumentation – the piano, production ambiance, shifting percussion, and Bakst’s voice at the center of it all. She has a voice capable of compelling exploratory touches, always ferreting out the emotion implicit in the song’s lyrics, and building a moment that you not only hear but even see as well. “Mystery Girl” is interactive in a way that few songs are. We are used to rock songs engaging us on a physical and mental level, but Bakst’s pop chops realize that as well with this single.
The lyrics sketch, rather than belabor, the song’s “situation”. Her attentive enunciation never addresses two lines in a similar way. It is a song that, as well, stays open-ended regarding interpretation. Various listeners will undoubtedly come away from hearing the track’s lyrics with different interpretations about what Bakst is saying with this track while others will feel “Mystery Girl” is more clear-cut.
This is the hallmark of a great song. It’s a hallmark, as well, of a cut listeners can revisit many times without ever exhausting its freshness. We will likely look back at Bakst’s “Mystery Girl” as one of the key pieces in the foundation of her career and it isn’t difficult to envision this track remaining a part of her live performances for many years to come.
The highlight for many will be the song’s chorus. She exhibits great musicality in that moment, latching into the track’s memorable hook, and the music is quite complementary to that moment. It’s one of many, however. Ally Bakst’s “Mystery Girl” takes listeners on a dazzling journey that you’ll be hoping to repeat with her other material and introduces newcomers to a fantastic talent who will hopefully be with us, the audience, for many years to come.
Garth Thomas