Track Reviews // Jai Paul - Do You Love Her Now & He
Two
singles (XL Recordings, 1st June 2019)
If you
know, you know. Anyone with ears to the ground in the myspace years would’ve
been held down by the vulnerability, grooviness and visionary beauty of Jai Paul’s music. The soup of inspiration
Jai Paul cooks up, from R&B,
ambient electronica and bubblegum pop to folk-tinged songs with Hindi film samples
and quaking bass gives off a fragrant fog of fumes – a little Prince, Thom Yorke, a dash of Kanye
even – all held together by a magpie interest for glistening melodies and
digital possibility (take a look at www.jai-paul.com).
The lurching
heartthrob of BTSTU, the
subdued wild animal under Jasmine, and
then the leak in April 2013 that drove the mercurial Londoner out of the online
light. Since then there’s been but rustlings, subterranean murmurs and the
enigmatic Paul Institute.
These long-awaited tracks are glinting with catharsis –
developed from seeds that were being planted in 2013 as Jai Paul readied a major release under Richard Russell’s XL Recordings. They come with a frank letter addressing
the leak (which has been released under the defiant title Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) and with all of this processed it suggests
real intent once again in an early sacrifice to the Gods of online hype.
Do You Love Her Now
is an evening sky swoon of purples, pinks and blues. The production that
drew the Paul brothers comparisons with Dilla
and D’Angelo is all there fading up
into a minimalist disco groove with percussion so bright and cavernous it could’ve
been released on Trojan Records.
There are sections where the stumbling bass beat and the winding vocals spiral
almost too close to the sun, confirming what Paul himself has said – that these songs are polished gems from the
cutting room floor of a few years gone by.
The swelling synths and chicken scratch guitarwork on He further date the original genesis of
the songs, but the PC Music bass that
smash cuts through at the chorus is a powerful reminder of the 30 year old’s
mastery of light and shade. Somewhere in the Random Access Memories funk neon disco amongst the Justin Vernon celestial choirs there
still beats the relentlessly inventing heart of potential.
The softened falsetto edges of these songs when compared
to Jai Paul’s earlier work are no less
skilfully crafted or but they do lack a
little of their danger and bite. He’ll no doubt want to escape the shadow of
his storied past (if not the accumulated ability to light up quarters of the
blogosphere with ease), but to do that fully he’ll need to show us what Jai Paul next.
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