Track Reviews // Kate Tempest - Firesmoke
First
single from upcoming album ‘The Book of
Traps and Lessons’ (Fiction Records, June 14th 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.
Comments
Post a Comment