‘Feels’ is a seven-track journey to healing by Olu [ EP Review]

Feels appears a seven-track articulation of seven topic-based diary entries as Olu navigate the risque waters of melodious Sophisti-pop, Quiet Storm, Neo-soul, Soul, R&B, New Wave, Ambient and Trapsoul. The best way Olu creates songs like ‘Lagos Hypeman’ typifies traits of an attentive social observer who in all probability dabbles within the artwork of psychoactive consumption.

Who jumps on a guitar-based Neo-soul monitor like, ‘Lagos Hypeman’ whereas discovering the bridge between pungent nonchalance and affectionate ode supply? I can inform you; proficient acts who communicate their true lives and experiences via their music. It’s a singular artwork that solely people who immerse and fuse themselves into experiences and creativeness can conjure.

Different odes are scattered throughout this 21-minute expertise as Olu discusses ache within the distance, love in earnest, music as a power, self-love as necessity, despair as commonplace infamy and success as a purpose. Nonetheless, all these are outcomes of various experiences that doc a journey to therapeutic.

A typical theme all through this album is its bid to venture its maker’s unavoidable positivity. As piano chords create suspense on ‘God Save The Queen,’ Olu makes Quiet Storm together with her story of despair – crammed with a ache that she wanted time to fathom, settle for and specific. However in the identical home, she in all probability lives together with her accomplice – presumably, a husband.

She refers to that individual because the King and herself as a Queen – self-adulation even within the thick of despair. That half, “The queen is in ache…” offers this author eargasms – it’s a uncommon zenith that he craves from ambient Quiet Storm. Olu should additionally take a bow for her pen sport on this track – element is mired in simply accessible symbolism that simplify her storytelling.

One other frequent theme on Feels is acceptance; if Olu isn’t accepting and expressing love for Lagos, a metropolis others curse, she is accepting her feelings on guitar-based R&B like, ‘Feels Like.’

After a second of hesitation, Olu accepts actual love that took her without warning, “Needed to rethink the way in which I believe, needed to redefine love, needed to come out of my shell… Needed to come discover you, needed to come love you…” This track ‘Feels Like’ an ode to the attractive love story that grew to become her marriage.

Then, the minimalist manufacturing that homes ‘Fading’ aids what looks as if an ode to the gripping results of fine intercourse. On New Wave manufacturing sits ‘Made It,’ and Olu makes use of it to debate helplessness, however she isn’t as coherent or audible in her supply as on different sounds.

‘A Factor’ paperwork Olu’s relationship together with her music in addition to the rigorous emotional rollercoaster of her artistic course of. She needs individuals to grasp these feelings, however like The Coy Mistress she shrugs the necessity to specific and bins it up, “You don’t know a factor, you don’t know what I’ve seen…”

However ultimately, Olu ends a venture that begins within the throes of despair with self-hype and self love on, ‘I Love Myself.’ Whenever you attain the tip of this venture, it appears like Olu makes use of Feels to inform a narrative of convalescence whereas highlighting all the pieces that helped her heal; music, love, Lagos and good intercourse.

What a venture. These misleading cadences with the piano on ‘I Love Myself’ are wonderful. And yeah, Olu can write… actually write.

Scores: /10

• Zero-1.9: Flop

• 2.Zero-Three.9: Close to fall

• four.Zero-5.9: Common

• 6.Zero-7.9: Victory

• eight.Zero-10: Champion

Pulse Ranking: /10

eight.5 – Champion