(Fade to Mind)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
There's not always a good reason why someone has only (thus far) scored big with the underground. Most hard info about this tremendously interesting L.A. singer-songwriter comes from just a couple of parroting sources in the bubble of online indie-oriented writing. Which is fine, but doesn't give enough credit to the excellent collection of stark, sensual R&B with which she has made her formidable entrance. It's available for free online and will immediately endear itself to you.
Kelela belongs in the class of modern soul performers like Miguel and the Weeknd who betray a strong resemblance in sonics and performance style to modern rock, mainstream and otherwise. A couple of key comparisons she calls to mind are the xx and Everything But the Girl, but this is not to argue that she belongs outside the R&B idiom, even if most of her press so far has come from the likes of Pitchfork and the Fader. It seems more likely that -- as much as the minimalism of production on Cut 4 Me seems naturally to limit her appeal -- she's simply one step ahead of where the inventive fringe of mainstream R&B is headed in a couple of years. With so much cutting-edge material currently showcasing a druggy ambiance, she strips everything back to its essence with the help of a crew of varied producers like Morri$ and fellow L.A. denizen Kingdom.
The show here is Kelela's range and confidence, but the producers do a remarkable job of helping make this such an instantly invigorating and addictive mixtape. Opener "Guns & Synths" means its title literally, but its ping-ponging acidic layers are downright ordinary when compared to the confrontational, nearly abstract rhythms of "Enemy" or the boldly strange and massive "Keep It Cool." The latter feels like half a song, but is played and produced with such maddened enthusiasm that it's magic. Yet the sense of immersion is at its greatest on "Floor Show," the memorably weird and romantic melody and hooks of which ("till the end till the end of time") make it surprisingly easy to drop, free of resistance, into its intriguing hybrid of proggish soul and rock. It's maximalist in the writing, not in the sound, which is important to those violently opposed to proggish anything.
Besides, Kelela's excellence as a singer is beyond question whether you care much for the drift of these songs or not. No matter how much of a stunt the track is, she is reliably sprawled out and adventurous in a most sumptuous sense, unflinching before all weirdness. Kicking drum machine imbued with oddly placed sax and ghostly hip hop chanting on "Go All Night"? Bird sounds and off-putting effects on the stirringly intimate and beautiful "A Lie"? No more a challenge than the skewed but radio-ready anthem of the title track and its crazy-ish synths under a voice and groove that go up and down and back again then wander off. So often, Kelela herself provides the hook, the melding together of everything. She can be filtered and manipulated to within an inch of her sonic life on the near-perfect "Something Else" or overdubbed into complex oblivion on "Cherry Coffee" but still she is the noise we wander into and don't wish to leave.
Cut 4 Me is one of the best mixtapes I've ever heard, often close to indistinguishable from a proper album except, I suppose, in the manner that some of the songs don't quite end, extrapolating and repeating themselves instead -- which depending on your mood, may just as well be a benefit. The shaky vulnerability running like blood through this arid, faultless atmosphere has the cohesion and depth of a remarkable, out-of-nowhere debut, which makes me all the more eager to see what happens when that true debut comes.
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