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Dels Petals Have Fallen Ninja Tune

14.11.14

This year the Ninja Tune stable had two horses in the Mercury Music Prize race: eventual winners Young Fathers and the Guardian-reader catnip of the poet/performer Kate Tempest. DELS’ debut album, Gob, should’ve been a contender for a nomination itself in 2011.

A muscular, articulate and hitherto relatively playful lyricist, DELS’ debut was predicated on stretching his energetic flow across a bouncing chassis of electronic beats. His second album is darker, more cinematic and more reflective than his first, his vocals more plaintive and – at times – less compelling. It’s not that there aren’t flashes of brilliance on Petals Have Fallen. His collaboration with vocalist Kerry Leatham and beatsmith Bonobo on Pulls results in a delicate and dreamy dalliance, while partnering with the excellent Rosie Lowe on Burning Beaches is a good move: her chorus hook lifts the tune and adds gravitas to DELS’ dream-sequence verses. In hindsight, though, the joy of his debut was in the restless, synthetic, rhythms that underpinned his lyrical specu- lations. The digitised shuffle of Pack of Wolves, and the anarchic swagger of RGB and Bird Milk are probably the closest to the spirit of his debut: full of energy, and unexpected turns.

But too much of Petals Have Fallen has been daubed in a thick coat of Seriousness, and a moody, vaguely menacing air pervades much of the album. The problem is, it doesn’t suit him – when he raps “I should’ve been a blizzard man I’m that cold / Dusting off my mind these rhymes will put you in a choke hold”, it just sounds a bit half-arsed: what happened to the daft (and more to the point, deft) DELS we used to know?