Nadah el Shazly, omg the return of

Nadah’s debut album ‘Ahwar’ was one of my favourite albums of 2017 (though I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear it until some time in 2018 - that whole era is hazy to me now) - art-rock at its finest: dense, knotty, spiky, inscrutable, beautiful.

I had waited so long for a follow-up that I had given up believing one would be forthcoming. But here we are and ‘Laini Tani’ exists and is a thing in the world and it’s gorgeous.

It’s also extremely different to ‘Ahwar’: whereas that was clearly the work of a group of musicians executing the vision of a guiding mind, this feels like the manifestation of the guiding mind alone: no longer swampy and murky and opaque but like a lit-up piece of glass, composed of multi-tracked vocals and synths and fluttering rhythms. That makes it sound like this is an easier or more inviting album than its predecessor. It’s not: more like, the battles that Nadah used to fight have simply been moved upwards onto higher terrain, with changes to the landscape and the weapons but not the stakes.

Even vocally, the transition feels momentous: a shift towards deliberateness, even when Nadah gets low and slow here it sounds like a witch’s incantation. “Banit” in particular needs to be heard to be believed, like industrial pop devised by a society with no contact with popular music since about 1981 (I wonder: does Nadah like ‘Odyshape’??). Likewise “Dafaa Robaai” and “Ghrozestein”: music for car crashes in a busy metropolis which abandoned road rules long ago. (Sometimes on these tracks I’m put in mind of FSOL’s ‘ISDN’ - but with a heightened sense of urgency and presence)

I was trying to think of the best antecedent for this switch-up and, oddly, the one that occurred to me was the stylistic shift from Yeasayer’s ‘All Hour Cymbals’ to ‘Odd Blood’ - the move is similar both sonically and in tone - though I’m reluctant to lean too much into that comparison given how different Nadah is musically on multiple grounds.

And also, anyway! It’s lovely! Listen to it, and listen to ‘Ahwar’ as well if you haven’t already.

Lovely is right. Only just started listening but the drum sound on Kaabi Aali is delicious