How a lot would you let love change you? That’s the dare that singer and songwriter Jamila Woods tosses contained in the circle on her sprawling new album Water Made Us. Throughout 17 songs, she considers love as a cell that may mutate and multiply, and she or he asks us to rejoice as she revels in its adjustments. It’s been 4 years since LEGACY! LEGACY!, an impatient bullhorn lofted by an artist pressing to set proper historic slights. Since then Woods has been preoccupied by an inward metamorphosis, telling Them that she sought “to signify totally different levels of my life or relationships as a cycle.” Whereas her earlier work sought to be definitive, right here she’s fluid, tethered solely to a private philosophy of contentment and give up. The musical inclinations and existential inquiries are curious and voracious, but Woods retains them sprightly and agile.
“Bugs,” the opener, is deceptively nonchalant in its pursuit of affection. “Why not have pleasure in your method to the one/Or the second?” Woods asks. Looking for “the one” can really feel futile; she makes the duty seem worthy, virtually noble, much less about discovering and extra about savoring. She additionally advises us to relax out: “Why a lot strain?” Jasminfire’s hovering violin provides the music a nursery rhyme high quality that shortly turns hymnal, whereas drummer Homer Steinweiss turns the latter a part of the music right into a jazz session, buying and selling fours to wind down the evening. “Ship a Dove” is clean and melodic, within the vein of R&B heavyweights Mtume, and samples Nikki Giovanni’s far-reaching SOUL! dialog with James Baldwin. Giovanni talked to Baldwin about love, relationships, and the duty to point out up for one another with gentleness, even when it’s troublesome or unfaithful within the second. “Faux it with me,” she implored. Woods continues that potent plea, singing, “Don’t save your worst for me/I’m not your leather-based Everlast… Mislead me nonetheless.” In dialog along with her inspirations and contemporaries, notably Kelela on Raven, Woods asks if her paramours are robust sufficient to do what love requires.
Songs like “Wreckage Room,” “Thermostat,” and “I Miss All My Exes” are candid with a touch of play. Woods speaks from her soul and makes life’s virtues—belief, religion, hope, reminiscence—appear not simply aspirational however mandatory. Julian Reed’s piano lends an ominous air to the bare grief of the previous two songs, whereas siblings Ayanna and Kamaria Woods’ choral harmonies on “Wreckage Room” evoke the familiarity and luxury of these we belief to hold us at our lowest: our household. The humor emerges as Woods revisits the quirks that made each previous relationship comparable but totally different, remembering the way it felt to be cared for by exes who “cook dinner veggie burgers with Lawry’s, lemon pepper all the things,” or these “who speak to God in a distinct language.”
