Track Reviews // Kate Tempest - Firesmoke

First single from upcoming album ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’ (Fiction Records, June 14^th 2019)

Ubiquitously acclaimed poet, novelist, playwright, rapper (etc.) Kate Tempest is back; working on her upcoming album with the legendary Rick Rubin she’s seeking to build on a trajectory that has seen her nominated for Best Female at the Brits and two Mercury Prizes. This literary polymath pens rhymes that challenge the very nature of poetry in our age and new track Firesmoke is no departure from that. There is however a sensitivity and openness that come with the millstone of experience which she manages to wear without slipping into vulnerability.

Imbuing subtle production and personal subject matter with real wild, elemental language Tempest creates duality like John Milton or John Donne but admits the all-too-human savage reality of Bukowski or Dickinson. Lines like “Your body is a home to rare Gods/I kneel at their temple/I’m blown to bits” go from transcendent to morbidly castaway so quickly and with such finesse in her delivery that you feel that slap-to-the-face sting of emotion with full force. Never letting you forget the realness of that fire behind the smokescreen old Romantics always put up – moving from “kisses to her lips” to “teeth and pistons” with liberated ease, taking in the full spectrum of “cleansing”, “fuelling”, “burning”, “gentle”, “ferocious” fire.

There’s refinement as well in the spoken word artist’s performance. Not happy simply being a wordsmith of spine-chilling perspicacity, as the production builds along a steady arc Tempest dips blissfully, almost accidentally, in and out of speech and song. Cadence and tone fall serendipitously into place for wonderful instants which evoke every fraught coupling that’s bathed in the harsh light of real life.

It’s an irresistible homage to the poet’s lover wherein sincere and uncompromising feeling lift assured understatement into ecstasy. Like a Tennessee Williams monologue shaking the characters and emotions we’ve learned to fear down to rubble to see what can grow up from the dust – this is a fearless epistle to the world-inheriting meekness of people in love and in the hands of a narrative wizard like Kate Tempest the possibilities for an album of similar quality are quite boundless.