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There\u2019s a moment, a little under a minute into the new album from R&B maverick Kelela, at which everything just comes together. It feels like a resolution, but surely it\u2019s too early for that: we\u2019ve only had fifty-eight seconds of relatively spare intro section up to this point. Perhaps, then, it\u2019s not a resolution of something internal to the record itself, but an expression of some wider sense of relief.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The moment in question is the shift to the chorus of \u201cidea 1,\u201d taking the opening track of <\/span>new avatar <\/span><\/i>from downtempo meditation, all soft arpeggios and tastefully bendy synths, to space-age hymn, propelled by quicksilver guitars and skyscraping vocal harmonies. It\u2019s a genuinely stunning move, its power augmented by the fact that a little over thirty seconds later, it all drops away, returning us to the solid ground of the second verse before whisking us upwards again before the track is out. The speed of movement and the smoothness of transition are a thing to behold.<\/span><\/p>\n It is this sense of movement and transition which has long animated the best of Kelela\u2019s restless, genre-splicing work. Since she first emerged from L.A.\u2019s buzzy alt-pop scene in the early 2010s, she\u2019s been a pretty restless presence, making music that always feels like it\u2019s <\/span>going somewhere<\/span><\/i>. Her work is all the more compelling for this dynamic quality, and <\/span>new avatar <\/span><\/i>retains it while gesturing back at the most powerful moments in her back catalog: see the way that the shivering breaks and pressurized bass of \u201cpoint blank\u201d recall both the grime-influenced grooves of debut mixtape <\/span>Cut 4 Me <\/span><\/i>and the clubbiest passages of 2023 album <\/span>Raven <\/span><\/i>without feeling like they\u2019re covering old ground.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise, there are shadows of 2017\u2019s <\/span>Take Me Apart <\/span><\/i>on a track like \u201cagainst me,\u201d which features some of Kelela\u2019s most spectacular vocal performances since that breakthrough record. Indeed, her instantly-identifiable vocal is often what holds her best work together, combining the classic R&B cocktail of staccato and melisma with graceful vibrato and conversational directness: perhaps the virtuosity and unpredictability of her singing is what prevents these gestures back in time from feeling nostalgic or repetitive.<\/span><\/p>\n All of this is to say that even against the backdrop of a genuinely exhilarating catalog, and partly because of the ways in which it refines and develops elements of that earlier work, <\/span>new avatar<\/span><\/i> might be Kelela\u2019s most accomplished record yet. The adventurism and intellect that have made her music so exciting and unpredictable up to this point remain, but here they\u2019re complemented by a sense of lightness and self-assurance that has not so much been absent on previous albums as only briefly tolerated. This record is wound less tightly: it swings, flutters and breathes in ways that feel new for Kelela.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Part of this may be credited to her admittance of those aforementioned older influences back into her music. The rock and shoegaze textures that dominated her formative years in the Washington D.C. indie scene prior to her move to L.A. making themselves felt at various points: see the circuitous flow of \u201cgoin down\u201d; the delicate chimes of \u201cretaliation lullaby\u201d; the Cure-like two-minute drench of \u201clinknb\u201d; the reverberant snares of \u201ccrystalize.\u201d A track like \u201cdon\u2019t piss me off,\u201d meanwhile, embraces the slippery low-end and slinky groove of UKG, elements which have burnt the edges of various Kelela records, most obviously <\/span>Take Me Apart<\/span><\/i>, but foregrounds them with greater confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n Her choice of guests might also have something to do with the record\u2019s comparatively relaxed atmosphere: Foushe\u00e9\u2019s breezy appearance on \u201cnew life forms\u201d unlocks the track\u2019s delicate momentum, while PinkPantheress lends a welcome touch of two-step precision to \u201cthe bridge\u201d that affords Kelela the license to step back and gather herself. Perhaps the most laidback collaboration of all is AK Paul\u2019s appearance on \u201coutta time,\u201d a lozenge-smooth slow jam replete with decadent lead guitar and Paul\u2019s rich, syrupy vocal. These songs are still unmistakably Kelela\u2014inventive, sincere, with every detail having been masterfully considered\u2014but there\u2019s more open space here. It suits her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps this is what lies beneath the feeling of relief that accompanies the initial lift of \u201cidea 1\u201d: a sense that this most restless of musicians has arrived somewhere truly satisfying, not just to her enormous and dedicated fanbase (who need little further convincing of her genius) but to Kelela herself. <\/span>new avatar <\/span><\/i>is the sound of an artist with nothing left to prove; where she heads next is thrillingly unpredictable. For now, she\u2019s given us one of the best pop albums of the year. <\/span>[Warp]<\/b><\/p>\n Luke Cartledge is a journalist, researcher and musician. He lives in south-east London and writes about underground music, radical politics and cultural change. <\/i>His writing has appeared in <\/i>The Guardian, Jacobin, Tribune, The Quietus\u00a0and many other publications, and he is a former editor at <\/i>Loud And Quiet.\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pastemagazine.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a moment, a little under a minute into the new album from R&B maverick Kelela, at which everything just comes together. It feels like a resolution, but surely it\u2019s too early for that: we\u2019ve only had fifty-eight seconds of relatively spare intro section up to this point. Perhaps, then, it\u2019s not a resolution of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2494592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2494591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Review-new-avatar-is-Kelelas-most-accomplished-record-yet.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2494591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2494593,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494591\/revisions\/2494593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2494592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}