Kelly Lee Owens—Inner Song

Following “the hardest three years of [her] life”, Kelly Lee Owens delivers Inner Song, an album as cathartic to listen to as it must have been to write. Owens’ self-titled debut featured a layered and eclectic tapestry of instruments and production techniques. Here, those edges are whittled. An increased focus on lyricism is favoured, and Inner Song consequently comes off much more personal than its predecessor.  

There are upsides and downsides to Owens’ new methodology. In many cases, the album’s stripped-back sound is lean and focused—but it can, too, feel somewhat incomplete. The centrepiece of Inner Song is a ‘Corner of My Sky’, a collaboration with the great John Cale. Cale’s vocal contribution is (predictably) stellar, but feels ill-served by Owens’ instrumental, which slightly outlives its own ideas. When compared to Owens’ own track ‘8’ (replete with zany instrumental choices and tracks stacked miles high on each other), ‘Corner of My Sky’ doesn’t quite nail its slow build-up or cathartic crescendo in the same way.

But elsewhere, the simpler approach works wonders. ‘Melt!’ disciplines itself in a way that solidifies and strengthens its theme. ‘Night’ uses Owens’ (now trademark) formula: an ascent from balladry into ecstatic techno—but feels like a more complete realisation of that potential than before.

Lyrics are strongest when implicit and minimal. ‘Re-Wild’ and ‘L.I.N.E.’ may be too on-the-nose and sneaker advert-y for some tastes—but that just comes with the territory. Owens is an earnest and forthright songwriter. For anyone who remembers ‘Evolution’ off the last album, her very slight propensity for cheese will be no surprise. In their own way, these lyrics support Owens’ new-agey vibes—a former nurse, she was partially inspired to create music as an investigation of its healing properties. Nine times out of ten, her lyrics are perfectly fine—but the superb music around them makes every single clanger resonate that much louder.

‘Jeanette’ is the most emotive this album gets—and not a single lyric is spoken. The track testifies Owen’s nigh-unmatched talent as a producer; it balances its warmth with steely temperance, swaddles its beat in exquisite shrouds of sound. The track feels like a real-time transfiguration of pain into joy—an affirmative centrepiece, which says more than words ever could. It’s the overflowing heart of an album which shelves old experiments, instigates new ones, and seeks throughout to lift the spirit and body.

Inner Song is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Sandunes—Spare Some Time

Sandunes’ Spare Some Time boasts almost as many vocal features as it does tracks. For some, this will be a red flag—there are just as many ‘purists’ in the sphere of electronic music as in jazz; listeners whose blinkers go up even at the suggestion of vocals—but they needn’t worry. Sandunes classily incorporates the intimate vocal performances on this EP with her summery, skilful production and flair for pop songwriting.

It is difficult to single out one specific performance as strong, but this isn’t to discredit Spare Some Time. Despite its slight runtime, this EP focuses on consistency; it eschews grandiose swells of emotion in favour of an immovable and seductive tone. Sometimes a producer’s skill is in their restraint, their control. Sandunes is an excellent example of this, refusing to sacrifice her project’s cohesion for a cheap chance to show off.

It’s hard to parse what’s quite so effective about Spare Some Time. Like the Ophelia figure on its cover, the EP feels isolated, heartbroken, but peaceful all the same. And, beneath its lake’s verdancy and floral brightness, there is a sense of excess and menace—menace which we could drown in like XTC’s “bug in brandy”. It’s what you might imagine being played at some dystopian summer fete—the cold crack of the coconut shie.

I suspect all this pastoral British imagery is my own projection—but maybe that’s testament to how open Spare Some Time is. Sandunes is a Mumbai-based female producer; which in a male-dominated space (is there even any other kind) many cannot ignore. Sandunes’ position in the sphere of alternative electronic music is something about which she is “prudent, but also celebratory”. This prudency gives Spare Some Time a universiality—a broad appeal which will maximise the number of listeners will find that piece of themselves, that connection, in it. But Sandunes makes sure to retain enough of her own voice to make sure all the confessional stuff lands.

So as far as I can say: Spare Some Time takes you to the beach, but you can’t get the sand off afterwards; it buys you an ice-cream that melts on your hands before you can eat it—but, hypnotised, you follow it around anyway.

Spare Some Time is available for pre-order and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

BABii—iii

It won’t surprise any listeners to learn that Margate-based producer BABii has, in the past, co-created an album with Iglooghost (xyz): a familiar clanging chaos litters her new EP, iii, one hole-punched by hollow-sounding, quasi-Noh percussion. But where Iglooghost’s music is like a hyperactive DnB mix produced by CBBC, BABii grounds iii with big-hearted explorations of closeness and distance.

It’s oddly fortuitous, given the circumstances. In the cloistered, claustrophobic togetherness of self-isolation, we’re prompted to discuss what it means to share space with someone. It’s all too easy to transpose the three tracks presented on iii to reflect our current situation—a situation they have no awareness of. This, in a way, reveals the broadness of their appeal; the universality with which BABii is speaking.

Opening track ‘BEAST’ is the most overt example of these themes—though iii is far from furtive with their presentation throughout. The longing of long-distance relationships is contrasted with loveless close-quarters ones. Essentially, the idiom ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ is unravelled and unpicked across the course of four minutes. ‘BEAST’ features some lyrics which are gorgeous in their simplicity (standouts include: “your distance is distance/ but I still feel close to you”; and “I wanna love you/ whenever I want to”). It also does great work in laying beat-driven foundations for what follows.

‘SNAKE’ and ‘RGB’, the EP’s final two tracks, are incrementally more complex and ambiguous. ‘SNAKE’ details a damaged relationship with a toxic (literally “venom” producing) person who’s been given one too many chances. It comes at the point of excision, where closeness is unviable and distance must be established. A snake is an almost comically clichéd metaphor to use, but it gives the song directness and a kind of counter-bitchiness all of its own. And ‘SNAKE’ climaxes by breaking its own grimy tension in a beautiful percussive rush.

‘RGB’ uses the primary colours to symbolise jostling dynamics in a relationship. It’s gently hugged by celestial synths, which underline in form the song’s content: a hug should be an embrace—to hold but not hold in place.  ‘RGB’ is a track is conflicted and ambivalent as the others on iii—and this is to the EP’s great credit. It’s the little complexities—in both its lyrics and production—that ensure iii is such a blast; never schmaltzy, constantly surprising. Grab it and keep it close.

iii is available for purchase and streaming pre-order here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Grimes—Miss Anthropocene

This year, a 2010 documentary by Canadian filmmaker Emily Kai Bock, Human Heart, resurfaced on youtube. Its subject is Claire Boucher (Grimes), then a gawky astrophysics flunker trying to chip a sideline for herself in the music industry. She appeared a character adjunct from society; buffeted by dreams and blissfully unaware of the shape of things. Ten years have passed since then—and Boucher and the world’s relationship has grown more complicated.

The Grimes of Human Heart is unrecognisable, replaced by a pop-star ice queen who wears Iris Van Herpen gowns in her music videos and tags Balenciaga in her sponsored Instagram posts. Boucher never aimed to be a relatable or socially-conscious artist—instead aiming for pixie/juggalo cross-breed—but she wasn’t a superficial one either. So this flouncing around in exclusive designer wear still feels oddly like a betrayal of principles.

In fact, Boucher has pretty much become a walking principle-betrayer. “I don’t want to be infantalised because I refuse to be sexualised” is a commendable statement—one that looks really good as the headline of a news article. But it feels rich coming from a performer who deliberately babies up her voice when she sings and had a camera rotate around her PVC-clad arse in the ‘We Appreciate Power’ video.

The obvious counterpoint is that Boucher was making a critical and much more specific statement about the music industry’s treatment of female artists. The elephant in the room: multi-billionaire Elon Musk—Boucher’s partner and modern-day Howard Hughes. When Musk was publicly called out on refusing to let his workers unionise, Boucher swept in to deflect the tweet-storm and defend him. It seems, for Boucher, the only imbalances worth correcting are those which affect her industry gal-pals and the surrounding cultural elite.

On Miss Anthropocene, Grimes presents a mass-appeal repackaging of Nick Land’s accelerationist philosophy, arguing that we should welcome the advent of climate change. In some way, it’s the same aloof, playful Grimes of ten years ago—but one who is directly addressing some rather more serious topics. “Wouldn’t it be fun if Dune was real”, the starry-eyed Grimes of Halfaxa, is a lot more palatable of a sci-fi conceit to accept than “we are all about to be annihilated in an ecological apocalypse haha”. It might not be so bad if Boucher wasn’t under the same roof as someone who could make a fucking difference.

I’m sure most positive criticism around Miss Anthropocene will focus on its production. But that’s really easy to get right when you have a thousand times the budget as everyone else.

Miss Anthropocene feels like a compromised product—something which has no concern for people, but still waters itself down for their approval. And Boucher herself has become harder to market as she has become more famous; a contradictory, nonsensical person who has been saddled with celebrity, and is now expected to take stances on things. But which is she feigning: indifference or sincerity?

You can find a download/streaming link for this one yourselves—she doesn’t need our help.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Poliça—When We Stay Alive

The 2010s were defined by retrospectivity. A wave crashed on itself; churned a froth of remixes, re-imaginings, and reinterpretations of already-haggard ideas. But even this perpetual break was nothing new—merely the extension of a facsimile of past artists.

On When We Stay Alive, Poliça continue a pattern of being greater than the sum of their parts. Language may be well-worn, its clauses played-out. But Poliça exact such a successful blending of influences that those influences dissolve completely. This is not some kitschy nostalgia-act or Julee Cruise-a-like. When We Stay Alive constantly presents new ways to inflect old sounds.

The most immediate appeal of Poliça’s music, especially when compared to that of their dream-pop contemporaries, is its muscularity. Tracks are punchy, compact, concise. There is an appealing ugliness to When We Stay Alive. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke once criticised his vocals as being ‘too pretty’. This proves not to be a problem for Poliça vocalist Channy Leaneagh. She balances the natural delicacy of her own voice with a potent, almost frightening conviction of delivery—even if half the time it does still sound like she’s singing through a desk fan. Absent is the bubblegummy self-infantalisation and waftiness that made Grimes’ Art Angels such a chore.

Ryan Olson, on production duties, grounds Leaneagh’s work. When We Stay Alive has the feel of a Daniel Lopatin project; full of tenderness despite an artificial, sucked-up-through-a-straw feel and some inhumanly brawny bass. An array of sounds can be heard, but—as with their corralled influences—Poliça combine these into something which feels both singular and complete. It’s the most confident the band have ever sounded.

The title of When We Stay Alive supposedly refers to Leaneagh’s rallying from an accident which had left her gravely injured, and left her on the brink of shelving music altogether. A renewed awareness of her mortality (and a lot of time off work) inspired the construction of half of the tracks on this LP. But the title speaks to a broader kind of survival, too. Poliça were always more than the fashions around them—on When We Stay Alive, they’ve proved it. Let’s see if another wave comes up behind them.

When We Stay Alive is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe