FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Kae Tempest - The Line Is a Curve
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AN artist who is more of a poet…
PHOTO CREDIT: Wolfgang Tillmans
and voice of their generation, Kae Tempest’s latest album, The Line Is a Curve, is among this year’s absolute best. I am including it in Revisiting… as it may have passed some people by. This year has been a phenomenal one for music, with so many interesting albums released. Everybody needs to spend time with Tempest’s latest gem! I may do one more of these features before the end of the year and throw some fresh light on an album released this year. Maybe those not familiar with Kae Tempest’s work would not have heard The Line Is a Curve. Their music is so remarkable, and the lyrics are among the most profound, moving and direct. The way Tempest can cut the core and get inside the heart. That is a gift they have had for years now. One of their most astonishing albums to date, I will end with just a couple of the reviews. They are glowing. Released back in April, The Line Is a Curve refers, I think, to sexuality and gender. In August 2020, in an Instagram post, Tempest came out as non-binary. Formerly recording as Kate Tempest, Kae Tempest is an artist who is finally more comfortable in their skin. Being who they want to be, rather than what others perceive them to be. They are just starting out on this new path, but is it great knowing that there is a sense of freedom and a new chapter starting for a remarkable songwriter, rapper, author and poet. I will come to some reviews for one of this year’s finest albums. First, The Guardian interviewed Tempest ahead of the release of their latest album. I have selected a few passages, as it is quite a revealing and hard-hitting talk:
“Coming out has been huge,” Tempest says, tentatively. “A beautiful but difficult thing to do publicly.” The process has been fraught with pain and uncertainty. “It’s hard enough to say: ‘Hey look, I’m trans or non-binary,’ to loved ones. And I have this twin life beyond my friends and family.”
“Trans people are so loving, so fucking beautiful,” they say. “I think of my community, and how much strength I’ve got from people telling me I don’t have to go through this alone.” Tempest feels the power of visibility. “If I hide, and I’m ashamed of myself, it’s [as if] I’m ashamed of them.”
Tempest is on more solid ground expressing themselves through their work, and their latest offering is no exception. Next month sees the release of their fourth solo album, The Line Is a Curve. Their first two albums received Mercury prize nominations. Tempest has already written three plays, a novel and six poetry books and last year published On Connection, their debut work of nonfiction. “But it’s starting to hit me how different this album is from everything else,” they say, “how far it could potentially go. It’s reaching for something beyond what the others have been.”
Musically, The Line Is a Curve is certainly a more introspective and personal affair than what has come before; Tempest’s lyrical and performance prowess, however, remains consistent. Each track goes in deep: “I can feel myself opening up … I’ve stopped hoping, I’m learning to trust; let me give love, receive love, and be nothing but love.”
For the first time in eight years, Tempest’s face is emblazoned on the artwork, too. It’s a sign, they say, of wanting to invite listeners in, in a way that previously felt difficult. Tempest spent years simultaneously desperate for the spotlight, and hugely uncomfortable inside it.
“For the last couple of records,” they say, “I wanted to disappear completely from the front-facing aspects of the industry.” There was a genuine desire to let the work speak for itself; constantly grappling with the fact that as a writer their output was enough, yet putting out music meant being public-facing. “But this time, I want to be different.”
“This whole album, and this process, and me coming out, is me squaring myself with the idea of what being a musician is,” they say, “and how that differs from being a playwright or an author, where you can be less visible.” Part of Tempest longs for that invisibility. “At the same time, what am I scared of? It’s my life.” Maybe, they say, openness might be healing. “The pain of what it used to be – to be interviewed or on telly, that pain is also about [gender] dysphoria,” they say. “And because I’m doing something to treat that, maybe it’s not going to hurt this time”.
“I am aware my brain is fucking intense,” they reply, cracking a smile. The room feels lighter. “It’s like this weird mate always hanging out with me.” In the past, they’ve crashed hard. “Back in the day, I’d come back from a tour and I’d fall over. I couldn’t even make it to bed. It would take me days to fill the reservoir again.” Now, they hope things might be different.
“I was always me on stage,” they say, “but I was hiding who I was, including from myself … When I perform I go to the depths; beyond gender, beyond body. I leave everything behind. That’s why it was addictive.”
This time, though, it will be Kae Tempest transcending. “I’ve not had a tour where I’ve known this iteration of myself,” Tempest says, eyes closed. “It’s going to be joyful, although I’ve got no fucking clue where it’ll take me”.
This is Tempest’s show, but musicians who have been playing with them since they first began gigging provide little smatterings of drums, guitar, tuba, cornet, and french horn. Further contributions come from Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten (whose verse on “I Saw Light” feels conservative and glib compared to Tempest’s incisive and intimate imagery) and former BROCKHAMPTON member Kevin Abstract, who was introduced to Tempest through Rick Rubin, the album’s executive producer. Tempest and Carey have spent the last several years learning from the studio guru, using their time at Shangri-La trying to reconstruct the relationship between Tempest’s intricately polysyllabic verses with Carey’s post-dubstep productions. On 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, their first Rubin-produced project, Carey reined in his sound, leaving more space for Tempest’s words. Carey and Tempest repeat this formula on The Line Is a Curve: As Carey’s synths brood, Tempest explores a whole poetry anthology’s worth of meters. Their dramatic delivery functions like a musical monologue, and their lyrics, which are stuffed with glottal stops and plosive consonants, function like a layer of percussion against Carey’s largely beatless electronic meanderings.
Throughout, Tempest balances character study, vignettes, monologues, and prosaic details that function metonymically—“Discarded masks, empty tubes/The colds, the flus,” they rap on “Salt Coast”—with each detail reconstructing the universe we live in. Tempest’s visceral yet temperate delivery is comparable to Little Simz’s calm conviction. Like Simz, too, Tempest is almost Biblical in their mode of address. Tempest’s linguistic instinct, however, is nearly peerless. The tight iambic trimeter of “Nothing to Prove”—ten lines of six slick syllables—sounds like bullets. Elsewhere, on “Priority Boredom,” where each verse is dedicated to its own vowel sound, the monotony of individualism is cleverly represented with congested “or” sounds: “Priority boredom/Gorging/Four courses/Forced absorption,” they spit, the words like slushy fruit in their mouth”.
Let us round up with a review from DIY. Maybe not quite as highly-reviewed and well-received as, say, 2016’s Let Them Eat Chaos, The Line Is a Curve is still a phenomenal album with some of Kae Tempest’s most heartfelt, moving and stunning lyrics. As someone renowned for their gift with words, The Line Is a Curve does not disappoint! It is an album that becomes richer and more rewarding each time you pass through it:
“The art of passing stories down through generations has long been replaced by the ability to capture words as data, to be stored until beyond human obsolescence. But even though this art is no longer practised, Kae Tempest is unafraid to share their experiences with us all, in the form of beat-laden, lucid poetry. The minimal beats on ‘The Line Is A Curve’ lean on Kae’s spoken vocals, the artist directing them, as opposed to the other way around. Their handpicked transcontinental roster of collaborators stretches from Brockhampton’s Kevin Abstract on ‘More Pressure’ to the glacé lullaby of fellow Londoner Lianne La Havas. Each word is meticulously delivered, with the strength given to each syllable making the entire record a heady and vivid listen. We are instantly placed in Kae’s shoes, surrounded by the same media onslaught, bubbling anxiety and artistic growth they experience every time they open their eyes. ‘Salt Coast’ utilises meandering coastal metaphors to paint an evocative picture of Kae’s headspace, while the minimal ‘I Saw Light’ sees Tempest team up with Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten, delivering an enchanting masterclass in duet poetry. On ‘The Line Is A Curve’ Kae Tempest removes their mask, revealing an intimate and often blunt aperture into their lived experience. Rife with feelings of ephemeral isolation and deep personal anxieties, they have realised a new wave of modern storytelling, forging ‘The Line Is A Curve’ as an answer to an open call for honesty”.
A typically amazing and gifted performer, I cannot wait to see Tempest hit the road next year. I think they have completed some dates in promotion of The Line Is a Curve, but there is gong to be hunger and demand to see more dates come to pass. With a loving and loyal fanbase there is this support behind Tempest in what has been a changeable and challenging year in many ways. I hope that 2023 is a year where Kae Tempest experiences so much…
SUCCESS and happiness.