Album reviews: Victoria Monet – JAGUAR, and Another Sky – I Slept On the Floor
Victoria Monet – JAGUAR
★★★★☆
Victoria Monet is the captain of her own pleasure. Having studied the lyrics of Janet Jackson while writing her solo project, JAGUAR, she now perfectly emulates the sultriness of that earlier Eighties and Nineties R&B.
With just eight tracks, JAGUAR makes for a short yet thrillingly sexy listening experience. From start to finish, Monet’s songs deliver mellow yet funky instrumentation, with a hint of glittery disco on the livelier songs. Often, she adopts what would be described as a traditionally masculine gaze: confident, brash, assertive. Monet knows what she wants and exactly how to get it.
Certain songs are so explicit – delivered in silky, honeyed vocals – that they’re likely to make Monet’s audience blush. “Moment” is a psychedelic wet dream, while “Touch Me” is a futuristic, mid-tempo jam. Across the project, she explores all facets of lust – from euphoria to the fall-out that comes with “Experience” (a shiny mirrorball of a collaboration with Khalid and SG Lewis).
After writing hits for artists such as Ariana Grande (“Thank U, Next”, “7 Rings”) and Fifth Harmony, and following sporadic EP releases, Monet is ready for her own moment in the spotlight. JAGUAR is a seductive debut that marks her as a driving force among the new R&B generation. Brittny Pierre
Another Sky – I Slept On the Floor
★★★★☆
Catrin Vincent’s voice hits you like a crack of thunder. It’s a good thing too, since her band, Another Sky, so often tackle the ways in which people are silenced. With a voice like that – somehow genderless, alien – it’s simply impossible not to listen to her.
On their first album, I Slept On the Floor, the Goldsmiths-formed band explore weighty issues such as mental health and toxic masculinity with autobiographical honesty. On “Brave Face”, written for someone in an abusive relationship, Vincent is wrathful on her friend’s behalf, as though she might lend them her own strength.
Single “Avalanche” is a blistering #MeToo anthem. Vincent unleashes the full power of her voice across a landscape of crawling guitar riffs, juddering rhythms and ominous percussion: “When you hold them to account/ They’ll spit you out/ Just a bad taste in their mouth.”
Quieter tracks prove that Another Sky are a band with a remarkable instinct for how to allow space for contemplation. The tender “All Ends” is full of sparse piano notes and brief, falsetto utterances, while the title track is a barely-there, vocodered whisper redolent of Imogen Heap. I Slept On the Floor is a marvellous, and intense, debut. Roisin O’Connor
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