Need Marea: On the Romance of Being

Need Marea’s therapeutic powers don’t vanish when he steps off stage, and now he has the credentials to show it. After the discharge of his eponymous debut, a file of otherworldly membership music suffused with erotic vitality, the queer South African artist underwent coaching as a standard Nguni religious healer, or sangoma, accepting the decision from above to serve his earthly and ancestral communities. His second album, On the Romance of Being, is a collective affair, with Marea stepping out from behind the laptop computer to entrance a 13-piece band culled from South Africa’s avant-garde jazz and experimental music scenes. Collectively, they take a leap from Need’s digitized churn to swooning orchestral soul, dancing throughout the divide between flesh and spirit. 

Opener “Ezulwini” slowly rolls out the file’s forged of musicians because it conjures a seance. Sibusiso Mashiloane and Sbu Zondi maintain down the rhythm part on piano and drums respectively, stirring up a mild mist of twinkling keys and light-weight cymbal faucets earlier than Portia Sibiya and Andrei Van Wyk activate a volcanic eruption of distorted bass and guitar, giving On the Romance of Being its decisive second of liftoff. Marea explores the complete vary of his operatic vocals over their triumphant post-rock stomp: “I want to see you levitate,” he repeats, rising from a piercing falsetto to a commanding shout. 

The album burns brightest on a pair of songs during which Marea acknowledges the bounds of his grace within the face of emotionally unavailable lovers. On the bilingual “Be Free,” he sways between mockery in English (“I find it very lame/That you fear yourself”) and generosity in Zulu (“My cup runneth over, yet you are afraid/Why do you cower in the face of love?”). Finally, his persistence runs skinny, and the music erupts right into a blast of strings and wordless cries as he chooses himself. “Makhukhu” takes a softer strategy: Marea’s bitterness towards a companion’s opacity—“It’s oh so quizzical/Perplexing perhaps/All the depth that you lack”—is framed by quivering eighth-note piano chords and a slinky bassline. He sings of mountains piercing clouds and gateways to bliss, however because the band climbs in the direction of a glittering crescendo, hopes for a shared romantic imaginative and prescient crystallize right into a lonely mirage.

Given the density of demanding vocal performances and show-stopping instrumental shredding, it’s pure that Marea and his bandmates would need to catch their breath. Whereas “Skhathi”’s new wave guitar figures and warbled vocals are nice sufficient, its comparatively tame groove feels out of step with the album’s dazzling hairpin turns. However Marea redeems himself instantly with nearer “Banzi,” a nine-minute digital free jazz exercise that includes 4 gloriously grueling minutes of rhythmic shouts and growls. With one ultimate bare cymbal crash, the room clears, leaving Marea alone on the microphone—a vessel for 2 worlds, desirous to be refilled.