Review
Thrashing guitars collide with crystalline synths on “idea 1,” setting new avatar in a tense space between shoegaze, club music, and Kelela’s liquid R&B. Critics hear the shift as purposeful rather than cosmetic: Pitchfork describes an album that “turns to guitars at a moment fraught with social and emotional tension,” while NME calls its defining quality a “beautifully controlled register.” The production keeps its pressure low and constant—house bass, skittish drums, distorted guitar, and featherlight harmonies circling lyrics about exhaustion, autonomy, and relationships under strain.
That restraint gives the record its particular mood: bruised, intimate, and quietly defiant rather than openly explosive. “new life forms” briefly opens into warmth through dreamy guitar and Fousheé’s presence, while “the bridge” supplies a rush of drum’n’bass euphoria, but Kelela repeatedly returns to spacious, brooding minimalism. As Pitchfork puts it, the album’s “music isn’t any less potent” despite lower stakes than Raven—a concise evolution of her sound, not a rupture.
