The most innovative voice in contemporary R&B broadens her reflective journey, infused with Afro-feminist references, on a record with ghostly contours.
After a five-year hiatus, Kelela released in 2023 Raven, merging dance music and ambient to articulate the tremors of her experience as a racialized and queer individual. Infused with Afro-feminist references (from bell hooks to Octavia E. Butler), the album offered through the dancefloor a space to both think about and celebrate her lived reality. Three years later, it is by reconnecting with her roots (those of the progressive metal of the group Dizzy Spells, where she began) that the American singer deepens her message.
If fluidity was present on her previous album in the water motif, this time New Avatar tells its story through smoke. The haze that emanates from the distorted notes of American guitarist Scarlet House, but also from 2-step incursions (Don’t Piss Me Off and The Bridge) that summon the ghost of Burial.
How to create in an era that offers no future?
A reference that calls for another: that of Mark Fisher, the British critic who popularized the concept of hauntology (following Derrida) in music to denounce the erasure of possible futures, the novelty caused by the constant resort to retrofuturistic references.
Markers of the 1990s, shoegaze and the 2-step thus give the album its ghostly silhouette that resonates with Kelela’s stance, explaining why she does not want her music to divert attention from what is happening in the world. For her, as for us, how to create in an era that offers no future, especially when one may be the target of multiple discriminations?
In response, the singer invites shaping the present. By taking hold of shoegaze—a genre where Black musicians are particularly underrepresented—while also granting herself well-deserved recognition, as heard on Linknb: “All I know is that I paved the way/Underpaid”.
New Avatar (Warp/Kuroneko). Release on July 10. In concert at L’Élysée Montmartre, Paris, on October 27.
