Yesterday's Gone

About

<i>Yesterday’s Gone</i> is the portrait of the artist as a young man, but it’s something Loyle Carner finds impossible to paint without the color, outline, and impressions of his friends and family. This confessional debut is an introduction to a singular British talent—an incendiary rapper and poet—but his voice is only one of a choru. Step back and you’ll see that the record is a vast tapestry of storytelling, of community and responsibility; of daydreams and memorie, both tender and painful, that are the total of Loyle Carner’s yesterdays and the promise of all his tomorrow. Carner comes out swinging with “The Isle of Arran.” Built upon a foundation of S.C.I. Youth Choir’s “The Lord Will Make a Way,” it announces itself with biblical triumph as if he were a boxer stepping into the ring—but his opponent won’t show up. “I wonder why my dad didn’t want me/Ex didn’t need me,” he demand, naming the track after the home of his grandfather, one of the few major male role models in his upbringing. He wrestles with the weight of the twentysomething experience through deeply personal, humdrum vignette. The soft-dying blues of “Damselfly” sees Carner confront the stagnancy of his romantic relationship, interrupted by the sound of him eagerly checking his phone when he gets a text only to be crushed to find it’s just a friend. The jazz-flecked “Ain’t Nothing Changed,” which samples Italian composer Piero Umiliani, reckons with the burden of coming of age in the inner city. .

via Apple Music

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