Tirzah – trip9love…???

Tirzah and Mica Levi have been a winning combination for five years now, as the singer’s low-key, naturalistic vocals work well with the producer’s mix of warm tones and avant-garde intrigue. For their third collaborative album, the premise is simple: what if two central elements are a constant presence throughout, only altering as much as necessary to support the songs in their variety? Thus every song on trip9love…??? contains echoey piano performances, ranging from beautifully gentle to spookily dissonant, and most tracks feature a punchy, rhythmically intense drum groove.

The first 10 minutes of this relatively brief record are home to three songs which are so similar that it’s hypnotising. The arrangement shouldn’t work as well as it does – these rapid-fire hi-hats, chunky kickdrums and slapping snares, reminiscent of the percussion on Ciara’s Like A Boy, are slathered over the chords and vocals of a much more ambient track. But by the time Tirzah’s finished her impressionistic verses on u all the time, it’s clear the backbeat’s relentless energy is entirely complementary (“Let’s just take time, blowing my mind / Fire in my heart, don’t even start / Take me for a ride, blowing me up / Keep it legit, letting it slip / Finally clicked, left me in bits / Let’s keep it real, how do you feel?”).

The rest of the album sees Levi being more experimental with the elements, as today’s drum loop is slowed down to such an extent that the transients blend into each other, while Stars breaks it into a choppy tremolo, all but drowned out by distorted 808 bass. 2 D I C U V sees the piano at its most noisy and overdriven, the instrument unrecognisably brash, but Tirzah still gets on top of the mix without raising her voice in a display of sonic acrobatics that Steve Albini might be proud of.

In a competitive field 6 Phrazes might be the most powerful song, with poetic, nuanced lyrics about an estranged relationship (“Know you can trust, know this because / I’ve always been there for us”). The lyric melody and piano sync up in unexpected ways, demonstrating remarkable creative agility as well as the chemistry that has got Tirzah and Levi this far. trip9love…??? is what happens when brilliant artists navigate their way around self-imposed limitations: most music doesn’t sound like this, but perhaps it should.