NPR First Listen: Jacob Collier, “In My Room”
NPR has a review today of wunderkind Jacob Collier’s debut album; it’s officially coming out on July 1st, but the entire album is online at NPR for your listening astonishment.
That’s the thing about Collier: His music operates on multiple levels at once. His sound is all happy showbiz dazzle on top, while underneath, in the boiler room, he’s conjuring Steve Reich and Frank Zappa. His tunes are rooted in stunning, opulent, proudly consonant chords, but sometimes they take sudden left turns into terrifying dissonance. He’s daring and calculating all at once — a child of the Internet who darts from one magical idea to the next, sometimes abandoning hypnotic grooves before they’ve even fully coalesced. Above all, Collier’s got an agile, fully alive musical mind and a distinct sound and, perhaps most importantly, the willingness to take chances. Listening to his sometimes dizzying debut, you get the sense that he could go in any direction and succeed. Or, at the very least, create something interesting.
Here’s Jacob’s stunning arrangement of the Beach Boys’ classic “In My Room,” one of my all-time favorite songs made even more amazing.
And here’s the full album:
