Kelela: Raven review – between the dancefloor and the bedroom

Beyoncé’s Renaissance was a celebration of Black club music, and specifically the freedom carved out in queer spaces. Largely absent since her debut album Take Me Apart and its remixes (2017-18), US R&B outlier Kelela also goes hard at the club; her long-awaited second LP is a more first-hand account, foregrounding a rebirth.

Since her debut, the singer has delved deep, absorbing narratives of resistance to racism, misogynoir (sexism as it relates to the Black female experience) and foregrounding queer female creativity. The result is a record that divides its time between the dancefloor and the bedroom, moving via hazy, in-between spaces filled with delicate yearning and immersive sound design.

Kelela’s choice of beats has long skewed British, with old-school drum’n’bass powering this album’s most immediate “ravin” track, Contact. But this is a record designed to penetrate cell-deep, with slow, unspooling tracks such as Holier, where beats don’t intrude, the music hanging as though in a space out of time. The standout title track builds deliciously slowly, outlining the distance travelled and – after a piano ripple, angelic backing vocals and an assertion of Kelela’s needs and desires – climaxing into a digital beat workout.