Review Summary: What am I gonna do to wake up?
Kate Tempest is an English poet, spoken word artist, playwright and rapper (depending on how far you are willing to stretch that definition). Struggling to find her way in an increasingly hostile world, she has led – in her own words – a wayward youth, spent squatting, rapping at cops and generally rebelling against established authority. This general discontent seems to be the driving factor on
Let Them Eat Chaos.
The record opens with ‘Picture a Vacuum’, in which Kate paints a distant view of the emptiness of the universe, followed by a soothing melody. When we arrive on Earth the beat becomes far more disturbing and tense. Producer Dan Carry creates a skeletal soundscape evoking the buzzing of modern-day London city life, and Kate quickly shows her mastery of both style and substance with increasingly tense and pessimistic lyrics. Throughout the album these two manage to near perfectly complement each other. Kate brings some of the most vivid wordplay in the genre to the table and contrasts it with minimalist, dark, sometimes ethereal, sometimes industrial melodies. This strong disconnect manages to paint a compelling portrait of the life of a new generation trying to make their way in a less and less human world.
She follows this stylistic opener with ‘Lionmouth Door Knocker’ in which she reveals the concept of the album. She introduces seven Londoners, all of different class and background, as a representation of her generation, all awake in the middle of the night, all spending their time lamenting their mistakes, analyzing the causes of their misery and dreaming of what could’ve been.
Through this personal lense
Let Them Eat Chaos is an incredibly engaging critique of the modern Western way of living. Kate tells stories of financial inequality, mental trauma, the extortion of the working class, the general sense of loneliness that seems too common nowadays, the increasingly hedonistic lifestyle of our generation and the propagation thereof by faceless brands. On ‘Europe is Lost’ she attacks mindless nationalism, the disconnect we show towards others and the environment and the political class that in preoccupied with nothing but their own gain and the maintaining of the status-quo, shooting off a diss at Cameron while she’s at it.
She engages these topics with tact and confidence, and leaves the final verdict of the situations she channels into the album to the listener, without sounding too abrasive, uninformed or judgmental, unlike many other young politically engaged musicians. Despite taking on such complex and large subjects, she never loses sense of the bigger picture or the listener’s attention by constantly relating it to the personal struggles of the characters she paints on this concept album. Anti-corporate rhetoric is always followed by stories of isolation, lost love and familial drama. Through this grounded approach none of her characters are stereotyped; throughout the album they remain believable and nuanced.
The framing of the topics throughout the album is a double-edged sword however, it’s personal nature makes the tribulations our characters go through all the more captivating, but it prevents her from delving deep into the topics that deserve more attention. Another gripe is the somewhat anticlimactic penultimate track ‘Breaks’, that quickly does away with the depressing atmosphere created early on and maintained throughout the album. However, closing track ‘Tunnel Vision’ quickly jumps in to pull on the reins and leaves the listener with Kate calling on her loved ones to realize that life means very little without people to share it with.
