Ghostpoet
I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep
Pias America
The Ghostpoet name has been Obaro Ejimiwe’s vehicle of choice for delivering his words and message deep inside traces of grime with washes of indie-pop and electronica across the last decade. I was a fan for the first few albums – and then…forgot. Didn’t go off him at all. Just lost touch in the vast seas of music.
I was thrilled to know he was still making music, still consistent too, and thrilled to hear his latest which is as familiar to me and as comforting sonically (despite being so world-weary) as when I was so sure his debut full-lengther was one of my favourite albums of the year back in 2011.
You’d never call Ghostpoet a rapper, but there’s a special delivery he has – essentially he’s a singing poet, delivering stinging spoken-word lines with the occasional lilt of a tune creeping in within the rhymes.
Imagine Roots Manuva and Radiohead collaborating – that’s the basic palette and sonic tone and feel of his albums and I Grow Tired continues that very vibe. As the title gives heavy clue this is about the many things wrong with the world from the rise of the alt-right to racial profiling and play-the-man politics and the general feeling of unease around knowing the daily news reports are awful and part of the problem but it’s important – seemingly – to be across them still, to be alert to all the hurt in the world without any real way of knowing the best strategy to fight against it all.
So that’s heavy stuff. But Ghostpoet has always managed, through the lilt and crags of his voice, through the cinematic moods of the music, to make it listenable, an enjoyable ride despite (and because of) the depth of the lyrical themes.
Across a whole album it can start to feel samey and when he adds a female voice to duet with – him all mumbling-croak, she all songbird – you could imagine the sort of nasty IP lawyer that his content arguably rails again going in with an argument that this is almost exclusively Tricky’s domain. But that’s a small grumble.
Ghostpoet is back. And I like thinking about how if I wanted to build something in a lab out of equal parts Burial and Gil Scott-Heron it might have ended up sounding a little something…like this.
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