★★★★
One of the earliest examples of anthropodermic bibliopegy – the art of binding books in human skin – is a French copy of the Bible that dates back to the 13th century.
Upon first glance it’s an ugly thing: a crumbling volume crafted from a very ancient pain. But spend enough time staring at its yellowed pages and the book begins to work its magic. It’s horrible, but mighty; steeped in suffering, but significant in a way few other objects are.
Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound works in exactly the same way. Sure, it’s a little more kitsch than a book fashioned out of a dead body – a little sexier, a little more Michael Jackson – but the combination of miracle, melancholy and malice that makes that unholy Bible so significant is all over the record.
Ear-wormy tracks like ‘Augustine’ are tempered with snatches of soliloquy – desperate, defiant monologues, like the speech that shatters the crystal cool electro of ‘By Ourselves’ into a thousand myriad pieces – while a song like ‘E.V.P.’ somehow manages to be quietly tragic and desperately danceable at the same time.
It’s R&B that’s caught a glimpse of itself at two in the morning in a grotty bathroom mirror – a very bad time masquerading itself as a very good one.
Blood Orange’sFreetown Soundis out now throughDomino.
