- Music is a beacon in times of darkness. It’s a truism eminently demonstrated by Noah Slee, the light touch of his effortless soul and his new EP, Twice. It’s been a little difficult to find the points of light, metaphorical or real, through the haze of recent events, but Slee cuts through. Neither his baggage or mine can really weigh down the uplifting qualities of his performance here. I gotta say, this week? I needed this.
Musically it’s as diverse as any of his previous work: the boundary-free style of 2017’s Otherland mixtape extends to Twice. The delicate trap r’n’b of Soulflower gives way to the unconcerned mish-mash trap / boom-bap / electro of Hold On! Stop Me! Which is really only to say, hey, we can go anywhere; and we do. Still mashes more beats styles while emphasising a very upbeat soul in the harmonies. Do That makes best use of FHAT’s Bruno Mars vocals for a shamelessly cheesy blend that goes on to exhibit shades of both Jamiroquai and Bee Gees, over the top of a pumping nu-disco house beat. Outta My Way pulls back to the same stylistic affections as Still, which would be fine without anything else, but it sets up the big finish that is the sinuous funk of America, which would sound like D’Angelo, except, despite its inner tension, this is still twice as happy as D’Angelo will ever be. As great as the stylistic flipbook is, often it’s the little touches that get me the most, like the acapella vocal bridge and coda in Soulflower which are only seconds long, but completely haunting. Or that tiny little walking-bass interlude in Do That: if you’re after extra credit, Slee, you got it.
The cavalcade of styles alone should be a sweaty workout, but for all that Slee spends much of his time wrestling with those traditional bugbears of love and life, the ebullience of the music means he handles it all without ever really seeming to lose the slightest bit of his cool. In a way that makes the EP’s final track, America, the more unusual. After the traditional romance of Soulflower, the wistful, nostalgic relationship pain of Still or the ‘don’t wreck my vibe’ club thud of Do That, America is a very different beast. Its soulful anxiety and slap bass give it shades of the nervous, paranoid energy of Flylo and Kendrick Lamar on Never Catch Me. The echoes of Childish Gambino’s This Is America are also, obviously apparent, although Slee’s hard look at the land-of-the-free is, unlike Gambino’s, an outsider’s vision. I’m quite conscious of putting it up against two towering achievements of song there, but Slee’s is no slouch and it’s gripped, harder, by a different energy than what drives much of his other work here. The soulful scales of his vocal are much more plaintive, the least settled of anywhere on the record. The whole song feels like the same question repeated over and over without receiving an answer: “American dream, what’s that even mean?” As a Tongan who’s tripped across a large part of the planet, Slee has had the opportunity to see a lot of culture, done a lot of different ways. Always, however, a shadow looms in the background, covering him everywhere he goes and whatever he does. It makes you think about how he’s currently based in Berlin, one of the truly great beacons for a freer cultural expression in the contemporary world, like it was a desperate bid to escape the artistic chains that stretch across the Atlantic.
You can’t live in this world and be wholly free, which -not to be trite- is one of the reasons we have soul music. That goes some way to explaining why Twice, for all its sweet ease and lightness of being, finishes on an unanswered question. That being the case I’ll take what consolations I can in music. For all that Twice is less than twenty minutes of it, it’s a big consolation.
- Chris Cobcroft.