The Line Is A Curve

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It’s a daily operation to increase your resilience, cultivate a deeper acceptance, let go of what’s chasing you and lean in to the pressures. Starting from a place of isolation and dejection, Tempest ends with community-facing lightness and love.

I believe that at some point in the future, we will reflect on The Line Is A Curve as an important development in the career of Kae Tempest. If you’ve ever wondered what Kae Tempest would sound like if they’d been a performer in a 1920s jazz bar, then you should have a listen to ‘These Are The Days’, the song that kicks off the second half of their latest album The Line Is A Curve. By contrast, some tracks on The Line Is A Curve do not succeed in drawing us in with quite the same impact, and that’s because they function in a fashion that is the polar opposite to both tracks discussed above.Still, when Tempest decelerates the flow on No Prizes, the suspense and intensity fade away, leaving the track feeling a little empty. Those moments when we are caught off guard; the occasions when the contrast between the music and voice is most stark. And just three songs later, with an inspiring chorus of ‘move, I’ll fight you till I win’, we have the closest thing to a club banger that Kae has released so far.

Covertly, it crept into the rooms, and the anxieties, of a group of neighbours in a London street at 4. The Line Is a Curve is their fourth album and their most grounded to date, with songs that blend electronic, pop-rock and hip-hop.Since making their live debut doing spoken word at 16, London-based Kae Tempest has made their mark across multiple disciplines: poetry, theater, fiction, and rapping. While on the majority of their previous releases Kae was the sole performer on most songs, across this latest work they don’t only bring in big name guests but they also let them have starring roles and take some of the key moments on the album.

Evidence that this increased self-belief has seeped into their music can be found in the presence of the guests on A Line Is A Curve.Beginning and ending with the same melody, the album’s cyclical structure mirrors the daily obligation to overcome our suffering and endure. It is like a confessional as they communicate via a distinctive form of rap poetry that only they understand. Inevitably, this confidence in showing themselves stems from the well-documented trajectory of their personal life.