- The last couple of years have been big for Imbi The Girl. Their second EP in as many years is about to drop, accompanied by a heavy touring regimen and plenty of media presence. Me though? I might be stuck in the past, because I can’t get beyond the first ever song of Imbi’s that I heard. Acidic, which ended up featuring on 2018 EP, for me, is a towering creation. Effortlessly combining a mastery of hiphop and soul, aching with feeling and personal honesty; easily one of my songs of the year. A song like that can be troublesome, because it sucks attention away from what comes after as people wait again for something exactly as good as that to happen again.
In a strange way, I think Imbi is having a bit of trouble getting past it too. The new EP, back then, lunges back with i used to, targeting the very same issues: “I used to feel like I’m tripping, not gripping, but slipping through distant rooms / Never again!” An attempt to get some kind of solid sense of personal identity happening, when it’s constantly being frayed at the edges by drug use and the challenges of living, especially as a gender non-binary person. Fair enough, it’s been a pacey release schedule and only two years: how much should things have changed? It’s more than just the lyrical themes though. Some of the key musical motifs are also itchily similar. That scalic three note pattern Imbi is just about fixated upon, every time I hear it and it’s Acidic all over again. That’s especially nagging because Imbi has always presented as an artist so in charge of their craft and like they could do anything; so if they can, maybe we need a little more of that? The upside of this is that Imbi really is very good and whatever uncomfortable echoes I get, i used to barrels along like a Lauryn Hill cut, with a ballsy boombap beat underneath.
The majority -if not all- of Imbi’s output in this last two year span has been a bit of an unsettled focus on personal identity. The young thoughts (interlude) starts with a fairly easy going feel, but quickly becomes a surge of anxiety: “I am only certain I feel confusion / I am confused about my vision, lately my sight has changed to hazy / Every second I find focus it slowly deteriorates and phases to a mush of ‘can I be that?’ and ‘am I capable’ and also sometimes ‘will I ever be enough’”. At the same time it manifests a drive toward the future, an ability to let go of the past and move on: “It’s sometimes best to forget what was / It’s sometimes best to look only forward to fields of what might be and what might become.” Across the EP there’s a roiling maelstrom of personal trauma, burning drive to move beyond it and, beyond that again, a slightly disarming acceptance of life and the mundane glue which holds it together as if just relaxing into it might be enough to get you through: “Perfectly positioned in front of the TV, to make it easier to see less and sink quicker, straight into its numbing warm depths away from the fear and from the stress / I’ve always liked TV.”
Peaches & Scream breaks out beyond personal boundaries, again troubling the smooth backing, the gliding rhodes, with a burst of soulful passion and this time some relationship woes, brought on, again, in a way we've heard before, by more internal dilemmas. It indulges in another spoken-word interlude at the conclusion to try and stamp out the uncertainty “I guess it’s some deep wound that’s been festering / But I’m unstitching the dodgy needlework as we speak / and I guess, I don’t want to speak to you as much … for now.”
The back half of the EP gives even more room to the easy feel that’s been lurking underneath of what’s come so far. our room has an almost reggae bounce, before Imbi’s anxiety again takes over and drives back into darker internal realms. The breeziness appears to be irrepressible, however, resurfacing on what we pass and -I was quite surprised- the last couple of cuts manifest the kind of unabashed warmth I associate with Arrested Development or Michael Franti. “Pass the purple pillow willow / Let me take an inside fellow, universal traveller, Interdimensional life passenger / Trip on gorgeous smoke and crystal.” It all had me grinning a bit dorkily. In the face of that, final number safe TV loses some of its euphoria, words barrelling forth in a stream of personal anxiety, failings and admissions, even as the music pops more of that universal warmth. It’s a kind of mea culpa, Imbi throwing wide their arms and looking for some understanding: “I’m doing my best, I’m sorry I can’t do more, just in this life, I’m confined to a human form!”
For all the reasons I’ve mentioned back then feels captured by the past: mentally, interpersonally, musically. You can’t deny the huge amount of talent and energy that Imbi is pouring into all of it, though. It’s like a loop that’s spinning faster and faster, waiting for a personal epiphany on Imbi’s part to smash that holding pattern to pieces and send the story shooting into the future. That is a time I can’t wait to see.
- Chris Cobcroft.