Dear Loopers,
Kelela dropped her first album in almost six years this week. It’s called Raven and is out on Warp Records.
I marked the occasion by listening to her back catalog, starting with 2013’s Cut 4 Me and through most of Take Me Apart, her previous full-length. What first piqued my interest were her collaborators, a group of producers whose main purpose was to create a futuristic world for our protagonist. It wasn’t an organic world. The life was found under darkness and inside the machines.
The best of the bunch was UK producer Jam City, who wisely continued to work with Kelela through Take Me Apart. The first song from that album, “Frontline,” once again introduced Kelela as our defiant lead. She’s unfazed and determined, batting away needy lovers and finding freedom on the dance floor.
As the song fades away, so does the fog and smoke that surrounds her. You hear heels clacking on the concrete, strutting toward an unknown target. Our protagonist points her keys toward the car. Beep beep. She opens the door, slides in, presses the ignition and speeds away. In that moment, Jam City completed the picture of a woman hurt too many times to trust anyone but herself:
Could be winter but I burn inside
In the back of my mind, I hear nothing
Keep this feeling alive, I feel nothing now
Then I'm in my ride
Anything I left behind don't mean nothing now
This is an old trick Jam City pulled years before on his own masterpiece, 2012’s Classical Curves. On “Hyatt Park Nights, Pt. I,” he erects a brutalist structure littered with broken glass, barking Dobermanns and aluminum beams. His protagonist is either causing the chaos or being subjected to it. Just like Kelela, when the noise fades away, he unlocks his car, sparks the ignition and drives away.
Both “Frontline” and “Hyatt Park Nights, Pt. I” use the sound of driving away to signify escape — from drama, from destruction, from the scene of the crime. It could be argued that Classical Curves paved the way for Kelela and Cut 4 Me. She rose as a force of good in that world, overcoming its bitterness and aggression with her own strength and courage.
Raven, her latest record, catches up with our protagonist in the distant future. Her battles won, she bathes in elegance, wondering just what eternal love can bring. The picture is silver and gold, sparkling with cosmic dust. It lacks the grit that Jam City brought to her previous records, the harsh environment that gave Kelela a reason to unlock her car and drive away. It makes it harder to connect with our protagonist, now in a world light years away from our own.
Beep beep,
Miguel
Before I leave
I’ll be selling records from my collection at the Rocky Mountain Record Show in Denver next weekend (Feb. 18-19). It’s $6 entry on Saturday and free on Sunday. The Loops! booth will have a lot of indie and electronic from the 2000s, as well as used R&B, jazz and rock records. Come say hi — the flyer is below:
I may use the opportunity to debut a subscription option for this newsletter. The contents will still be for everyone, but down the line I’m likely to add exclusives for the paying audience. I’ll make it worth your while.
I saw Godard’s Goodbye to Language (2014) this week, finally. It’s just over an hour and I still fell asleep near the end. Still, what a treasure it exists. I think it’ll be on the Criterion Channel until the end of the month.
And finally — R.I.P. Burt Bacharach, one of the finest American songwriters to ever live.