Breaking away from genre parameters and exploring his sonic depth with a moxie that can only be described as infectious, Jonathan Emile lays into the first few verses of his new single “Try a Likkle More” with concentrated restraint, saving the bulk of his cathartic powers for later on in the track. His disciplined approach is something that can be found across the whole of his new album Spaces-in-Between, out now everywhere quality independent music is sold and streamed, but in “Try a Likkle More,” his skillset is presented to us in one of the crispest performances he’s shared on record to date.
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Emile’s lyrics are frequently the at the heart of the best harmonies in this latest release, and in “Liberation (featuring Chanda T. Holmes)” and “More Than You Know (featuring Ezra Lewis),” we get a good picture as to just how versatile his poetry can be, regardless of how it’s being applied to the construction of a particular instrumental melody. There’s no doubting his God-given talents in these tracks, and arguably, the eight others that join them on Spaces-in-Between, and from a critical perspective, he’s developed his sound around this specific attribute beautifully.
Instrumentally, there’s not a lot of complexity to “Moses,” “Keep on Fighting,” “Canopy” or “Rock & Come Over,” but frankly, I don’t think there’s needs to be for us to be affected by the melodic wallop that each of these songs offers up to us. The acoustic guitars have as much of a punch in Spaces-in-Between as any of the other elements do, which is something that I just haven’t been able to say about a lot of the alternative/experimental reggae LPs that have been coming across my desk in 2020 (or the last couple of years, for that matter).
I would have started the tracklist off with “Try a Likkle More” and then leaned into “Keep on Fighting” had I been in charge of finishing the production here, but other than this minor shift in the arrangement of the material, you can’t beat the seamless progression between the songs in Spaces-in-Between. I get the feeling Emile wanted us to experience these melodies in the exact order that they were stacked, and if his ultimate goal was to create as much of a fever pitch as possible at the conclusion of the LP with “Try a Likkle More” and “Moses,” he definitely accomplished what he was setting out to do.
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If you weren’t already listening to Jonathan Emile before he dropped Spaces-in-Between this month, my gut tells me you’re going to be spinning his music after you get a taste of this stellar new record for the first time. As a singer and a songwriter, Emile is in top form and exuding a rare confidence often reserved only for the highly-regarded veterans of this genre and the many others that have benefited from its beats, and if he’s able to maintain this energy heading into his next release, he’s going to have a lot more success in this decade than he did the last.
Levi Colston