- Jordan Rakei was one of the earlier names to go big in Australia’s punching-above-its-weight neo-soul scene and certainly at the very head of the vanguard in Brisbane, back when he hung his hat here. That particular arrangement was a bit too good to last: the success he tasted, pairing his silky-smooth voice with dance doyens like Disclosure made his jaunt to London a permanent stay. He signed to venerable, left-field beats label Ninja Tune and it seems like only a little bit ago that he released his first full-length for them, now here’s his second, Origin.
Has fame changed the boy we -briefly- claimed as our own? Not so much. The stylistic continuity between Origin and Rakei’s previous full-length, Wallflower, is notable, possibly even remarkable. Smoothly moving funk, tricked out in jazz and soul provides an elegant setting for that voice which still, with that lyrical sweetness and tight vibrato, sounds just like Jeff Buckley. The ingredients are, as always, great, but it’s what you do with them that really counts. Album opener Mad World will give you a good idea of that. It doesn’t have much in common with the drained, suicidal sadness of Gary Jules’ song of the same name, but it’s definitely still troubled. “It’s a mad world, it’s a mad, mad world!” Rakei is just about yelling, full of desperation. The upper-mid-tempo beats feel harried, chased and Rakei is on the run. It’s true that the beats are bigger and bolder than on Wallflower but the production is careful to foreground the vocals and so the focus is always on his troubled stream of crooning.
Rakei has said he was a bit surprised at how dark the last record turned out, especially in live performance: its moodiness dragged the audience away from the party and down into his own introspective world. By contrast Origin is an attempt to provide more balance: “I wanted light and dark.” I wonder though, if things will turn out the same as last time.
To be fair, Rakei has really tried to get outside of his own head here. He consciously sat down and wrote songs about things in the world, rather than his own racing thoughts. In a rather Janelle Monae speculative, sci-fi spirit we get a current affairs smorgasbord of issues: “...one was about pollution, another about AI and integration, another about the Google cloud.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, it produces an emotional feel that’s just as weighted and heavy as before. Rakei has always been a thinker, wrestling with the world that confronts him and Origin isn’t the bigger picture so much as a bigger version of the same picture.
On occasion the music itself seems to try and lift the mood but it can feel incongruous, even disingenuous. For instance, the jokey neo-soul bounce of the chorus in You & Me “Just you wait and see / This time it’s coming for you and me” sounds like it’s supposed to be a promise of better days to come, but in performance it’s eerie, like the jolliness can’t be sustained and what’s really coming is the apocalypse. At its most intense, the music performs another trick and propels the smoothly self-effacing funk into the over-the-top ‘80’s fusion of Rakei’s heroes Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan. The synthetic joy of those moments of bright, fluorescent light, songs like Speak or Mantra, confuses me. I’m not sure whether they’re genuinely happy, or some final, desparate delusion like the end of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil before a dystopian darkness crushes us all.
Origin much like Wallflower is keyed to Jordan Rakei’s inescapable, soulful fretting. He’s a magnificent musician putting every ounce of his effort into trying to explain himself (to himself) and the world he’s a part of. Origin is, in many ways, an impressive record. I believe that when Jordan Rakei finally gives himself a break and just takes it easy, we’ll get a brilliant one.
- Chris Cobcroft.