Before Love Came to Kill Us

カナダ/トロント出身のソウル/R&Bシンガー、Jessie Reyez、待望のファースト・アルバム
Islandからのリリース。
2枚組LP

Anyone familiar with the range Jessie Reyez has shown since 2016 was not taken aback by news that the artist fought the pressure to make her first album a cohesive one. The uncommonly versatile singer and songwriter went multi-platinum in her native Canada with a sparse heartbreak ballad, Figures. Its parent release, the Kiddo EP, also featured the glass-rattling Gatekeeper -- an alarming account of her experience with a sexual predator -- in which she sang from her perspective, and rapped and sang from that of the offender. She has co-written simple love songs like One Kiss, a U.K. number one, U.S. Top 40 pop hit for Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa, and has also worked with Romeo Santos, Eminem, and Sam Smith. All of this has indicated that Reyez is a complex figure not cut out for unloading unified, easily digestible LPs. Before Love Came to Kill Us simply, if in a deliberately messy way, expands on her EPs, singles, and collaborations. Reyez makes her entrance with I shoulda fucked your friends on the adult contemporary quasi-trap ballad Do You Love Her, and just before the reappearance of Figures finishes with a comparably wholesome form of remorse on the gospel-tinged I Do. The in-between highlights are just as scattered. Reyez uses her voice as a protean instrument -- the settings of which include crooning child, squeaky-swaggering hedonist, high-velocity rapper, and raging Gwen Stefani -- and on the haunted ballad La Memoria, she sings in her first language. Unsurprisingly, the emotions are varied and unfiltered. Reyez is obsessed enough to jump off the roof (the Eminem duet Coffin), willing to pledge her allegiance to XXXTentacions Fuck Love (Deaf [Who Are You]), steadfast and grateful in the traditional ballad sense (Love in the Dark), and assertive in dominance (Ankles). That covers less than one-quarter of what Reyez relates here. Although its all over the place, Before Love Came to Kill Us radiates conviction from front to back, and is without doubt a true representation of its creator. ~ Andy Kellman

カルヴィン・ハリスやエミネムへの客演、ビリー・アイリッシュからの絶賛などによって世間の認知を高めてきたジェシー・レイエズだが、この初のフル・アルバムで不動の人気を得るだろう。舌っ足らずな可愛さと、ラテンな巻き舌によるワイルドさが同居する声質。無垢な透明感を放ちながら、深く濃い存在感も併せ持つ佇まい。そんな酸いと甘いを自然に歌い分ける、シンガーとしての天賦の才が存分に発揮された会心の一作だ。元彼への恨み節をトラップ・ソウルに乗せビターに歌う"Ankles"や、切なげに綴った未練がゴスペリッシュなコーラスと相まって胸に迫る"I Do"など、彼女の世界観は繊細で剥き出し。それらを支える楽曲群も、物憂げでアトモスフェリックな統一感をもって彼女の幅広い表現力に寄与する。
bounce (C)池谷瑛子