To emotionally keep one’s head above water as the rippling waves mercilessly attempt to drown your soul is a difficult task even for the most spirited. It’s a mission that ground-breaking experimental R&B singer Kelela Mizanekritos – who mixes R&B with innovative electronic production techniques – believes can be achieved and embraced, and provides her perspective in various ways on long-awaited third album Raven. This ideology is conveyed literally on Raven’s album sleeve, with the 39-year-old’s face just about visible within its grayscale photography. However the waves that desire to consume Kelela and the African-American queer community – of which she belongs to and is specifically speaking to on her musically exploratory, seductive and hypnotic record – can take many forms.
Raven is bookended by two similar soothing tracks in ‘Washed Away’ and ‘Far Away’. The former is describing how society shuns out minorities and how Kelela is attempting to fight against this series of discriminative waves. “The hope, the longing, fade away, blurry-eyed. Riding on metal rays. Moving on, a change of pace.” Airy synths are complimented with simple yet breath-taking twinkling lights of electronica. It’s this engaging yet minimalistic setup that highlights the force of Kelela’s eargasmic voice. Like on the rest of ‘Raven’, it is effortlessly powerful and blends seamlessly into each soundscape’s atmosphere and mood, and is helped also by her skilful moments of non-lyrical vocals. She can record an album without lyrics and it would be a wonderful listen. The track climaxes with a hard-hitting splash and the forming of bubbles. Furthermore, ‘Far Away’ is also ocean-dwelling but contains flickering noises and more vocal experimentation than its predecessor, sounding like Kelela is embracing the struggle of the waves. Its title contains a two-word phrase that is repeated several times across the record to perhaps show that there is still more to be done in the battle for race and sexuality acceptance.
Waves don’t have to be symbolized aquatically. Kelela mixes R&B and dance rhythms on Raven to show that one of her goals is to bring African-American communities to the dance floor. In interviews she admits that she is attempting to follow in the footsteps of Beyoncé’s Black-queer homage album Renaissance. Taking listeners to the waves of synchronizing nightclub movements with its inclusion of breakbeat – mixing it with house music (title track ‘Raven’), subtle strokes of rock guitar on ‘Missed Call’, a wayward teasing energy on ‘Happy Ending’, and a flirtatious context on the evocative gem ‘Contact’. The latter bridges the alcohol-fuelled moments of partying to the hypnotic waving motions of bedsheets as promiscuous clubbers descend into a sexual adventure. As Kelela seduces: “We’re party to party, it’s late but we’re wide awake. The bass in my body, I’m sinkin’, it’s so wide. Time is surreal, now I’m floating in outer space”.
The most satisfying moments on Raven are when it is irresistibly blissful and when the setting seemingly takes place in an erotic bedroom escapade. Kelela continues to use her smooth vocals but pairs them with slow and patient builds up of creaking nocturnal electronica (‘Fooley’), 80s drum machine (‘Let It Go’) and warping bass (‘Holier’). The highlight undeniably being ‘Sorbet’. Imagine Little Dragon mixed with Sade, as Kelela paints how the sugary ecstasy of an affair can be so intense that time and place become irrelevant: “Start with my hand on your skin (My hand). Only a touch, and we get into it (A touch). We start, where to begin? No need to rush, it nеver ends (It nevеr ends) It never ends. I don’t know where we are though (Where we are, where we are). It never ends” . With Valentine’s Day approaching, this could be a perfect soundtrack to many intimate experiences.
