At once soaring, dramatic, reflective, hyper and explosive, Debby Friday’s debut album GOOD LUCK lands like a bomb on your lap — across 30 minutes, it zips around musical ideas, intriguing production, and lyrical clarity that shows she’s ready for this exact moment in music.

The most consistent and successful marker of the album is Debby’s personality, which ranges from swaggering confidence on “I GOT IT”, “PLUTO BABY”, and “WHAT A MAN”, to coy playfulness on “HEARTBREAKERRR.” “Don’t try so hard / It don’t impress / It don’t affect me,” she says with Beyoncé levels of self-assurance on the electronic banger “I GOT IT”, assisted by a verse in Spanish from Uñas. The electric guitar backing on “WHAT A MAN” adds an extra level to her soaring vocals, filling the space expertly as she admits, “I held my son / I held him close / He burned me up / And then he froze.” The song builds and builds as she screams “What a man!”, the taunt mischievous. Even on “LET U DOWN”, where she isn’t in charge lyrically as she admits her guilt to a lover, the power and growth of the five-minute saga makes it clear she’s done more than enough to keep the ball in her court.

The album lulls on moments like “SAFE”, where her pitched-down vocals just aren’t propulsive enough to keep focus through its 4-minute run-time, especially when songs like “I GOT IT” do a lot more with much less time. “PLUTO BABY”, while excellent while it lasts, also could have gone much further. The sparse beat makes ample room for Debby’s cutting lyrics (“It’s for certain / I leave a motherfucker hurtin’”), but as it reaches the climax, where she screams the admission “I love to love!”, the song is over.

Sonic ideas, experimentation, confidence and playfulness all coagulate to make GOOD LUCK, technically speaking, a lot — but somehow it works. A clever runtime of 33 minutes makes you long for more, and there’s no doubt Debby has a lot more left in the tank.

Pre-order GOOD LUCK by Debby Friday HERE