FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Tempest
Part Four: Kate Tempest
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THERE are some big gigs coming up…
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
and Kate Tempest plays London’s Eventim Apollo on Tuesday (15th October). It is small wonder she is in demand and is playing some truly huge venues! Tempest has worked hard and paid her dues in music. From the promising artist who brought us her first solo album, Everybody Down, to the creator of one of this year’s best albums, The Book of Traps and Lessons – there is nobody as honest and striking as Kate Tempest. I will look back at her previous work but, before moving on, one needs to address The Book of Traps and Lessons in the context of a pre-Brexit Britain. The album explores a number of subjects, but there is this feeling of being able to get through to the other side of a bleak and unsure time. I think Tempest’s current album is her most stirring yet and there is plenty of hope to be found. When she was speaking with Lauren Laverne last week, she was asked whether she has hope; if she can see hope. There was a slight side-step of the question, yet Tempest explained how music gave her clarity and hope – maybe other things are not giving her strength and positivity. It is clear other people have got a lot from The Book of Traps and Lessons. It has deeply romantic and tender moments but, whereas previous albums have had effects and been quite busy…this album is sparser and more direct.
The reviews have been wonderfully positive. Here is how The Guardian assessed the album:
“Super-producer Rick Rubin brings a new restraint to Tempest. From the beginning of the record, the music is peeled away like orange skin, leaving a spine-chilling a capella at its centre. All Humans Too Late features Tempest’s voice alone, her stark vocal mirroring her poetic theme of isolation; humans separating themselves, not saying hello on the train platform, yelling at each other on the internet. She reckons with the crisis that humanity as a whole is facing right now (“We’re dead – all of me knows it”), reels at the magnitude of it, expresses wonder that we’re not grieving this emergency.
By the following track, Hold Your Own, simple synth chords bolster Tempest as she leans forward into a shaft of light, a new sense of optimism. Her manifesto demands that the listener stop chasing capitalist fantasies – “this whole thing thrives on us feeling incomplete” – and look for the warmth in each other instead. This energy builds towards Firesmoke, a campfire love song that reduces the rest of the world to “ripples in the middle distance” in comparison to the sight of a lover, dancing. “There is something in this tenderness that makes me want to live.” This record is a living poem that captures the angry tension of being alive in 2019: trying not to look directly at the oncoming crises, trying to love and give and dance in the midst of firesmoke”.
It is clear the introduction of Rick Rubin as producer has brought new life and nuance from Tempest’s work. I think Tempest is looking around her and trying to make sense of what is happening. I will look back in a bit but, before then, I want to bring in an interview where Tempest talked more about the album and how there are a lot of positives. Take songs like People’s Faces and there is that simple message: there is beauty in the faces of people. When speaking with Pop Matters, Tempest talked about The Book of Traps and Lessons’ aims:
"It's about me trying to reconcile the ability to spot these negative behaviors with the ability to actually change them," Tempest says, "I'm telling myself not to live in such an obsessive, consumptive, damaging way."
The album, even with Tempest's steady stream-of-consciousness and sparse instrumental elements, hints at the trouble brewing in the recesses of one's mind. Such turmoil results in real-world consequences: "But total existence needs meaning and myth / Many misjudged the way and got lost in the mist / Your loneliness is the symptom, not the sickness."
"It's basically a daily thing in my life being blown away by how beautiful people are," Tempest admits. "There's something beautiful about sharing that, much more so than saying 'Europe is lost'"
I think there are few out there who can describe the collective feeling more succinctly and powerfully than Kate Tempest. She has a way of being able to take observations we all experience and elevate the words to poetic levels. It is no surprise considering Tempest is a poet and playwright someone who has that love and understanding of language and how to get the most from it. Even though a lot of people are turning on to Tempest for the first time in 2019, she has been making music for a very long time. As she explained in this interview with The Line of Best Fit, it is her passion and quest:
"I was always making music, I just couldn't get anyone to put it out. I couldn't get a record deal and I think that I took a break from pushing all my energies into making music and doing more spoken word stuff because I was getting booked for gigs. Essentially,” Tempest says, “it was that simple. I started getting all these bookings as a poet and they would be like fifty quid which, for me, at that time, was a huge amount of money to get for a performance."
“So, I worked it out that if I did three shows in a weekend, plus doing work in schools; if I could get two or three work shop days in a month and do two or three gigs each weekend, not only could I have my rent covered but I could also chip in to pay for a little bit of studio time with my band so we could keep our demos ticking over.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Jenna Foxton for Loud and Quiet
Tempest has done her due diligence in the music world and beyond. Her first job was in a Lewisham record shop. She's also worked for charities and in schools. When she decided to transition to writing full time, she navigated her way through the opportunities that were available to her. One of those opportunities was writing poetry for a Deptford-based poetry organisation, Apples and Snakes. "It's like my local neighbourhood theatre and is just down the road from where I grew up."
Doing gigs there opened up Tempest's path to further opportunities such as writing for children's charity Barnardo's and some work, here and there, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. "For that Barnardo's thing," she says, "I was given a load of transcripts of young people and teenagers being interviewed about their life experiences and I was asked to kind of respond to that using these transcripts."
This shit was useful for me, because not only is this my deep inspiration and my calling and my vocation; this is also something I want to get better at. This is a craft and I had to do my apprenticeship".
I will discuss Tempest’s poetry and literature but, when looking at her latest masterpiece, one needs to head back and see where she started. Although Tempest was making music with her band, Sound of Rum, her first solo album, Everybody Down in 2014, is when she really broke through. With her friend and producer, Dan Carey, Tempest created this album that is familiar and accessible yet could only come from the mind of Tempest.
She announced herself as one of the most important British artists around and, even as far back as 2014, I knew she would go on to greatness. Some might say her best days are still ahead and, whilst that is true, Tempest played Glastonbury this year and, as I said, she plays Hammersmith on 15th of this month. Everybody Down definitely captured a mood back in 2014. In their review, AllMusic had this to say:
“Falling somewhere between John Cooper Clarke and Scroobius Pip, or the Streets and Samuel Beckett, London's Kate Tempest is a poet/rapper, and the real deal on both sides of that slash. Everybody Down, her debut album for the Big Dada label, could be considered performance poetry -- just like her piece Brand New Ancients, which was performed with orchestral backing at London's Battersea Arts Centre and won the Ted Hughes Award for innovation in poetry that same year -- but the music from Dan Carey is beat-driven, street stuff, plus if the urban characters that wind in and out of this story aren't wearing hoodies and sneakers, it must because they're taking their weekly bath. That's the problem with the aptly titled Everybody Down, as this concept LP deals with three characters who are so lonely, they've become spiteful, sullen, snide, and self-destructive while only speaking of hope as something encountered in dreams.
It's a drab palette with the only wash of color being how skillfully Tempest paints the picture. Besides, it's easy to slide into unattractiveness when your ex-convict uncle comes around and gives a look that says not "I love you" but "This is business and you should go" ("To the Victor the Spoils"), and while Brand New Ancients had its share of phoenixes, this one is all about the ashes. Even if Everybody Down is all thrills, pills, and bellyaches, and mostly the last, Tempest is only 27 and already dealing in pop music as high art. Forgive her for not raging against the darkness, and then delight in how she sings the fallen and forgotten's song so well”.
It is amazing looking back on that album and hearing how ready and alive Tempest was. There are few debuts that sound as complete and authoritative as Everybody Down. I love the fact that (the album) has this narrative arc and we look at the lives of three people, Becky, Harry and Pete. In this interview with The Guardian, Tempest talked about the concept of Everybody Down, working with Dan Carey and whether she thinks of herself as a poet:
“It was always really strange,” she says. “I never thought of myself as a poet. It just happened that I was doing more poetry gigs than other gigs. The same lyric that I could do with my band [the trio Sound of Rum], I could do without music and people would listen in a different way.”
She says the great thing about not making her solo debut album earlier (though she released one with Sound of Rum in 2011) is that only now does she have the narrative chops. When she hooked up with producer Dan Carey, who has worked with Franz Ferdinand and Bat for Lashes, she had the stamina and experience to tell the story of three struggling twentysomethings, Becky, Harry and Pete, over 10 riveting songs. “I think it could only have been made at that time in my life,” she says. “My whole brain had changed.”
The recording was interrupted by Carey’s other commitments, giving Tempest time to flesh out the trio’s lives in such detail that the challenge became what to leave out: the first draft of the four-minute Lonely Daze was three times as long. Some of that additional information will appear in her debut novel, The Bricks That Built the Houses, which picks up just after Everybody Down’s thrilling finale. (This might be the first album since the Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free that requires spoiler warnings.)
She calls the album “fiction that comes from a very real place”. The characters live in her neighbourhood and face the obstacles her friends face. She designed the choruses to connect with listeners who weren’t following the complicated story. “It’s kind of a relief when you stop the narrative for a minute,” she says. “Thank God for that! I know that it’s quite a demanding listen, the album, so I’m amazed how well it’s done.”
She says the album’s key theme, “constructing a selfhood that you can be proud of”, also informs Hold Your Own: “acknowledging all the selves that you’ve been and want to become. I’m desperate to articulate how important it is to know your space and fill it”.
I guess, if one was to notice a change from her debut to where we are now, perhaps there is less fiction; Tempest is writing from a more personal place; perhaps more political. Although she is writing about everyday people, The Book of Traps and Lessons seems more direct and broader than an album like Everybody Down – which, I maintain, is one of the best debuts of the last decade.
In terms of progression and leaps, 2016’s Let Them Eat Chaos took Tempest to a new level! It is a staggering album and, again, looks at modern Britain in a way we can all relate to. Kate Tempest is one of these artists who never holds back when it comes to the truth; her words explode and challenge the senses, yet there is such warmth and hope in everything she pens. With every release, one can hear that confidence and passion grow. Let Them Eat Chaos was another big success and received a raft of love and support. In this review, DIY highlights Tempest’s incredible lyrical voice:
“Like ‘Everybody Down,’ ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’ presents an extended, narrative-driven polemic on modern Britain. This time, though, Tempest sounds even angrier and more confrontational, injecting the delivery of her words with a particularly poisonous venom. Producer Dan Carey also helps to create a haunting, downbeat trip-hop inspired landscape. For instance: The chiming bells on opener ‘Picture A Vacuum’ warp into unrecognisable, pulsating drones, letting you know there’s little joy to be found beyond.
There is, however, immense enjoyment to be had in listening to Tempest’s lyrics. She’s perfected the art of setting the scene, mentioning little details like the “black gatepost with the concrete frog” in ‘Ketamine For Breakfast,’ or the “boarded up independent record store” in ‘Pictures On A Screen’ that bring her visions to life. Alongside this minutiae, she deftly eviscerates everything that’s bringing the country down. Whether it’s the gradual gentrification of London on ‘Perfect Coffee’ (“since when was this a winery? / It used to be a bingo”) or the apathy of the general public on ‘Don’t Fall In’ (“all the half-hearted, half-formed, fast-walking half-fury”), nothing is safe from her crosshairs. On the incendiary ‘Europe Is Lost’ there’s even a reference to #piggate, pointing out the hypocrisy that “they fuck the heads of dead pigs/ But the hoodie with the spliff/ Jail him he’s the criminal”.
I think one reason why Kate Tempest gets to the heart and hits the mark is because of that honesty. She does not romanticise modern life and cities like London. She holds a lot of faith when it comes to people, but Let Them Eat Chaos is a truly eye-opening experience. I will round things off by looking at Tempest’s literature and plays but, regarding her second album, there is that sense of hope and the fact that things can move on. Tempest never writes in a pessimistic and downbeat way: her music is there to illustrate reality but say that, if we pull together and show more respect, things can improve. In this 2017 interview with The Guardian, Tempest was asked about Let Them Eat Chaos and its themes:
“Neither London nor the world come out of Let Them Eat Chaos looking good. For all its compassion, it’s a thoroughly damning indictment of modern life from root to branch. “Carcinogenic, diabetic, asthmatic, epileptic, post-traumatic, bipolar and disaffected,” she raps on the punitive Europe is Lost. “Atomised, thinking we’re engaged when we’re pacified/ Staring at the screen so we don’t have to see the planet die.” Britain, she adds, is “the land where nobody gives a fuck”.
When the album came out last October, many listeners assumed Europe is Lost referred to Brexit, but she’d written these songs months earlier.
“You might think it’s about that and it probably is, but it’s not a response to that,” she says. “It’s a response to some of the things that gave rise to that. This particular moment in history has not just fallen on us out of nowhere and if you feel this is a particularly dread time, then you’re late. You weren’t looking.”
I wonder where, in the bleak, broken terrain of Let Them Eat Chaos, she locates a glimmer of optimism?
“The whole thing is an exercise in optimism, because it’s a creative act,” she says. “The thing that drives you might be painful, but the minute it becomes a creative act, it becomes about love. It’s such a beautiful and generous practice to be able to write or perform. It’s just pure love”.
There is, as I said, much more to Kate Tempest than the music itself. From poetry/story collections such as Everything Speaks in Its Own Way (2012) to plays Glasshouse (2014) and Hopelessly Devoted (2014), Tempest is a true Renaissance figure and multi-talented figure who is not only among the best writers of this generation; she is inspiring artists, poets and playwrights all around the world. There is no telling just how far she can go but, judging by the tour dates and popularity at her feet, she has little time to rest! I think Tempest will be an icon of the future; one of these legendary artists who headlines festivals and is talked about years from now. The Book of Traps and Lessons is proof Kate Tempest is a sensational talent and someone who speaks harder, more truthfully and beautifully than any politicians around. There is, in her music, wisdom and guidance; there is stark reality but there is hope and celebration. Kate Tempest is, in essence, just what we…
IMAGE CREDIT: Kate Tempest
ALL need right now.