Kae Tempest

★★★★ The Line Is A Curve FICTION. CD/DL/LP/MC

Lewisham rapper, poet and author’s emotional fourth LP embraces “letting go”.

As with 2019’s The Book Of Traps And

Lessons, Kae Tempest sticks to single takes on their first audio outing since coming out as trans/ non-binary. Dan Carey’s thrumming electronic menace backdrops the tight poetic metres of Salt Coast and fractious raps and unfiltered selfexamination of I Saw Light (a duet with Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten), while Tempest’s illuminating details (“I was in a party/Face mostly eyeballs”) seemingly cow Brockhampton rapper Kevin Abstract on quasi club-banger More Pressure. These Are The Days feels uniquely personal, Tempest railing “I am right here! I am managing!” over a crowing brass motif. Conceptually looser than its predecessors, its preoccupations with resilience, acceptance and surrender sing through Tempest’s soul-mining, secretbearing wordplay, revealing a more intimate dimension to this incisive chronicler of beleaguered times.