<p><span><span>- I feel a bit bad for Felivand’s (ex?) partner, the one getting the kiss-off in her number, <em>Gone</em>. When Felivand sings “<em>It’s time to understand / That i’m not your helping hand</em>” it feels like one half of this relationship has really outgrown the other. Later it’s “<em>Each day i’ve got energy i cannot shake / Each day i keep my needs first, tryna keep my head straight / I’ll see you on the flip side / I won’t be long cus this music’s got me moving.</em>” You are getting left behind, but hey, it might not be you, (formerly) significant other, maybe it’s just that Felivand operates at a higher level than most of the human race.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>That’s the impression I come away with from her new EP, <em>Nerve</em>. It’s just a very mature bit of work for a twenty-year-old r&b artist. It’s the emotion, it’s the lyrics, it’s the restraint, the production, the music… When I was listening to recent single <em>Trajectory</em>, thinking, ‘hey, this reminds me a bit of <strong>Sade</strong>’, it was like, wait, how many of the beats here haven't really seen the light of day since before Felivand was born?</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Felivand actually keeps her influences pretty close to her chest, except that one time she said, ‘oh, yeah, I listened to some <strong>Chet Faker</strong> this one time when I was a kid’. You got here from there? I feel like we’re being gently trolled. She did say that she’s a bit of a bowerbird when it comes to ‘a smooth beat and a killer bassline’; well, so much is obvious. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The rhodes on opener <em>Ebb & Flow</em> clued me in to the subtle but, once you listen, endemic jazz influence that creeps creeping around underneath the attention-dominating, multi-tracked vocal harmonies. I mean, this isn’t <strong>Hiatus Kaiyote</strong>, but it’s definitely in there. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>If I had to pick a single thing Felivand’s work reminds me of, I’d have to say it’d be <strong>The Internet</strong>, the way they both love lush r’n’b with so soft a fidelity in production the sound’s basically melting; except that <strong>Syd Tha Kid </strong>pivots to a whisper when Felivand’s goes big, like a sun-burst. The Internet’s beats are rooted in contemporary bass music, too, where Felivand folds in a bit more of history: the boom-bap of the ‘90s, some electro-boogie, which is itself an amalgam of disco and electro. All of that is wrapped up in the embrace of a pop sensibility which is pretty timeless. Okay, maybe there’s a bit of <strong>Lauryn Hill</strong> rolled in as well.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>I’m pretty sure Felivand handled much of the promo for <em>Nerve</em> herself, so it’s fair to say she is <em>unnervingly</em> together with the music game. Whoever that unnamed other is, the one she spends much of the EP kicking around like a can: you better get your act together! “<em>I’ll thank you for your time and then i’ll go / And i don’t wanna feel no guilt around it </em>” she sings over her shoulder, already halfway out the door. This is a sophisticated r’n’b record and both it and Felivand are going somewhere they’ll be properly appreciated.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Chris Cobcroft. </span></span></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1150881396/size=large/bgcol=f…; seamless><a href="https://felivand.bandcamp.com/album/nerve">Nerve by FELIVAND</a></iframe><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/012j3czlNko" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>