Dave
We’re All Alone In This Together
Neighbourhood
Buy via Official Store | Listen Below
Expectation can weigh heavy on any of us. When you have released a debut album to universal praise, won prizes galore (including the prestigious Mercury Prize in the UK), and spoken, seemingly, on behalf of those who have no voice to inspire and prompt societal change, the weight must seem impossibly immense.
Dave clearly felt this at times in contemplating the follow-up to that aforementioned work of genius, PSYCHODRAMA (2019). In Ciaran Thapar’s wonderful profile piece in GQ published this month, Dave explained it succinctly and powerfully: “When I write, I think ‘I cannot afford to fail.’ That pressure is exhausting.”
We’re All Alone In This Together is the successor to his debut smash and he describes it in the same GQ piece as a journey backwards in time to include “heritage, history, culture, my family, the countries that we come from and the regressive state of humanity in where we are now.” It is clear that while the pressure was great, the ambition was even greater.
From the outset two things are clear. First, that the musical accompaniments are at times more restrained and downbeat and, secondly, that Dave’s lyrical power is undiminished and unbowed by success. In fact, as he intimated in the GQ piece, the desire to speak even more truth to power is clearly evident alongside the same frank discussions of his own mental health and well-being as a result of his success. He opens the album with the lines: “I remember when I used to be innocent / Ain’t shit changed, I’m a young, black belligerent / Child of an immigrant / Lifestyle frivolous,” and neatly encapsulates the lyrical content of the album.
As before, there are moments of the flash lifestyle we imagine a famous and successful musician might have, but (as before) Dave always undercuts these moments of boastfulness with the details of his human frailty. The opener again reveals this, as he boasts of his flights to Santorini and his Lamborghini before breaking down life before wealth and success was his: “I knew that my life was a film / From when I had to share a bed with my mum and I was pissing myself / I just want my flowers while I’m here / So I can put at the front of the grave I’ve been digging myself.”
“Verdansk” is a good example of the subtle, downbeat accompaniments that fill the album. Dave’s piano takes center stage with a somber melody whilst deeper in the mix are delicate, almost-drowned strings with a clicking, whirring beat for good measure.
One of the highlights, meanwhile, is the epic mic battle of “In The Fire.” Dave, Ghetts, Giggs, Fredo and Meekz Manny trade bars over a sample of the Florida Mass Choir song “Have You Been Tried In The Fire” that could almost be an early Kanye West beat. Each brings their inimitable flow to the proceedings, but Dave matches them all as he rounds out the track.
There are a couple of songs that come and go in the middle of the album that don’t add anything new, but they act as a fire break between the inexorable heat of Dave’s coruscating polemic. Both “System” and “Lazarus” do that job well and, because social justice is never far from Dave’s mind, it still features in the lyrics.
Romantic love also makes an appearance as Snoh Aalegra pops up to duet with Dave on the slinky love song “Law Of Attraction” and “Both Sides Of A Smile” also draws on romance and love—in the latter case, it is the soured ending of a love affair over the course of a three-part composition featuring James Blake on vocals for the hook. In the final part of this gem, Dave breaks down how his monetary wealth means nothing when the heart breaks: “I wish I could pay for my sins with a lump sum / Restore her belief in me with a trust fund.”
In fact, you can feel Blake’s influences over the music at many points throughout, but those sparser backdrops only add more weight to the brutal power of Dave’s lyrics—there is nothing to get in the way of his acid delivery. In truth, one of the hardest aspects of reviewing the album is to single out individual lines for consumption—he is consistently excellent, always impassioned and never less than extremely intelligent.
“Three Rivers” is a case in point. This blistering attack on the treatment of the Windrush generation (and others) is filled to the very brim with ire and is intercut with sound clips of real people’s struggles against a criminally immoral and viciously corrupt government: “Imagine a place where you raise your kids / The only place you live says you ain’t a Brit / They’re deporting our people and it makes me sick / Cos they were broken by the country that they came to fix.”
At the center of it all though is an epic of supreme rhyming in “Heart Attack.” A slight guitar and gently humming drum and bass features Dave alone reflecting on what it means to be a product of a neglected, poverty-stricken land. He reflects on what life was, what it could have been and what it is now and then finds time to offer pathways out for others. The already sparse musical accompaniment fades gradually from earshot and leaves Dave breathlessly preaching to the streets alone. It is a sledgehammer to the conscience and a “fuck you” to those who criticize the hopeless.
At almost ten minutes long it begins with an all-too common news report about knife crime in London and ends with a distraught mother telling her story through the unstoppable tears of loss. In between, the whole polemic is instantly gut wrenching and eminently quotable, as Dave reels off the diatribe with all his heart and soul: “How many of our parents had dreams they abandoned / So they could put food on the table / Intelligent, worthy and able / That’s somebody’s parent you know? / And that affected the way I see shit / Nightclub toilet you peed on the seat / Cause you don’t know how it feels when your mum’s gotta clean shit.”
It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that someone could deal with the intense pressure Dave so eloquently outlined in the GQ interview and write something as impressive as this album. It places his eloquent, unflinching and fragile humanity front and center and showcases his lyrical skills throughout. Any fleeting moments of grandiosity are immediately cut down to size by his emotional honesty and self-reflection and he revels in the impact of words with double meanings. More than that though, he has so much to say—the songs are long and lyric-filled, yet he doesn’t waste a single word.
Notable Tracks: “Heart Attack” | “In The Fire” | “Survivor’s Guilt” | “Three Rivers”
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