Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Musicians dislike being pigeonholed. In their minds, they are free spirits in a glorious expanse of musical possibility. To be labelled or placed in a genre is akin to binding them up with red tape for narrow administrative purposes. The pigeonhole is where songbirds forget how to fly.Rosie Lowe’s Lover, Other opens with the sound of birdsong. It is the Devon-raised, London-based singer-songwriter’s third solo album, and her freest yet. The music defies categorisation, alighting variously on psychedelic funk (“Bezerk”), introspective electronic balladry (“Don’t Go”) and UK garage (“Something”). Songs are decorated with samples of Brazilian bossa nova and Japanese pop. The lyrical focus is small-scale (love, personal equilibrium) but the soundtrack is expansive. Co-produced by Lowe with saxophonist and keyboardist Harvey Grant, the album is an auteur-like work by an exile from the record industry’s song factory. Her debut Control was released in 2016 on the major label Polydor. The music was downtempo electronic soul, not a million miles from what once would have been known as trip-hop. The marketers affixed labels such as “the female James Blake” to her coolly minimalist style. But the adhesive was weak: she left Polydor after the album did not chart.Its follow-up YU came out in 2019 on a label run by Paul Epworth, a producer for Adele and Florence and the Machine. Lover, Other now arrives on a different, less mainstream-affiliated independent label. It shares a similarly audacious spirit with Son, her 2021 joint album with UK musician Duval Timothy, a choral-music-inspired record.The birdsong intro comes in “Sundown”, a hymnal number about finding one’s place in the world. “Mood to Make Love” has the slow pulse of a Portishead song, but conveys warmth rather than tension. “I’ll be sitting on the sidelines, it’s fine,” Lowe croons, content on the margins. “There Goes the Light” sets verses about dusk to a mellow hip-hop/soul beat, like the fading glow of sunset. The hoot of an owl can be heard at one point.Lowe’s voice is a light croon, recorded in close-up. This simple register is embroidered by intricately arranged layers of backing vocals. There is an enticing mix of sophistication and breeziness here, the result of freethinking rather than overthinking.★★★★☆‘Lover, Other’ is released by Blue Flowers Music
