My friend Adam asked me to write a brief something about a Black woman musician for his blog, and I did! Sharing below. Lianne La Havas if you see this, please get me tickets for your shows in New York!
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Summer 2020. Okay, so a lot is going on: I have inadvisably taken up with my neighbor once again. It’s hot out, but in a beautiful, endless light, endless days kind of way. Lingering and possibility. I open my music streaming app of choice to see that Lianne La Havas has a new album out, self-titled. I text Rachel who I remember is a big fan. I don’t know if she ever listens. Then, one day, no work, no school, and never getting on the subway again, I throw the album on my brick of a Bluetooth speaker and set out on my bike—up Throop Avenue, across Dekalb, heading, truly, nowhere, and loving it.
Listening to this album becomes part of my daily routine, on my way to Fort Greene or Marion Hopkinson Park, the first half of the album on the way, the latter for the journey back. I will get good at timing the belt-y parts with the downhill slalom of Lafayette Avenue.
I know Lianne as the beautiful Black British girlie with a big voice and gaping wide vibrato, with a number of delightful ‘this could be in an Apple commercial’ type bops. But this new album—it’s not so much that it’s raw in its production, which is actually really layered and glossy; or its lyrics, which on their own don’t jump out at me. Maybe it’s that the sad songs, like “Paper Thin” and “Bittersweet” and “Weird Fishes” sound so unguarded; or that the sweet songs like “Can’t Fight” and “Green Papaya” sound so earnest. But there’s something in this album that makes me listen every single day. Not on purpose, and without even noticing it so that, six months later, on my first pandemic birthday, 4,000 daily deaths, the Capitol rioters dreaming sweetly of their big day ahead, I treat myself to the only entertainment available: a long, solo walk through January mist, Lianne in my ears.
She is ritual, giving shape to formless time; and music, the sweet, simple fruit of experience. A balm lacquering the dullest, most fraught of days.