Yves Tumor's Safe in the Hands of Love transcends genres to offer an immersive listen

The surprise album release is no longer a tactic that garners the attention it once did. While Beyonce’s self-titled may have led the charge (there was Radiohead’s before that too), artists of all stripes have adopted the method to put out music for their fans. Every once in a while though, a sudden release has the ability to wow, for the quality of its content more than it’s method of first release. Yves Tumor, the secretive American musician (who may or may not have been born Sean Bowie) put out a new 41-minute album in September 2018, and it’s one that may well be his most surprising and mature to date. Last year’s Experiencing the Deposit of Faith hewed close to his mercurial debut, building on the atmospheric experimental and noise that seems to characterise his sound. The new album, Safe in the Hands of Love, is a progression, while also serving to take Tumor closer to radio-friendly alt-rock. Safe transcends genres to offer an immersive listen that’s best consumed in a single listen. [caption id=“attachment_5473091” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Safe in the Hands of Love, by Yves Tumor[/caption] With the help of guest spots by artists that include James K, Oxhy, Croatian Amor and Puce Mary, the album constantly shifts focus. Rewarding those who stick around past the noise and brutality, it morphs slowly, becoming almost pop-friendly towards its confessional middle. Tumor as a person has always been introverted and often unreadable, for the first time the new album offers listeners the chance to learn more about the enigmatic musician. Lyrics hint at childhood experiences in Tennessee and are sometimes foregrounded in the final sound mix, a rarity in the musicians ouvre so far, where the music has taken the lead over the words. The most challenging songs are the most interesting though, for the feeling they evoke. There’s a visceral claustrophobia that this album starts with, which slowly gives way to an upbeat collection of music. Third track ‘Honesty’ uses a beat that in the hands of the right DJ can be stretched out into a club-friendly dance floor filler. Making strategic use of 808 synths, the track stars out foreboding before opening out in a stuttering techno number. Full of about-faces, later in the album, on ‘Recognizing the Enemy’, Tumor combines the liturgical with the profane for a song that features church like intonations and repetition against a beat that is foreboding and yet starts out almost melancholic. It is Tumor’s ability to combine these disparate elements — in this case, grounded with bass heavy drumming, that lends its own sense of menace — that makes this an album that rewards multiple listens. The lyrics, which intone, “Inside my own living hell/ It means so much to me/ When I can’t recognise myself,” only build on the mood. First-time listeners should probably jump in with track ‘Noid’, which uses its pop music base to create a sing-along about the problems of being black in America. It’s only when Tumor samples police car sirens, and the poppy refrain of “911, 911, 911/ can’t trust them,” repeats that you realise how the song beguiles. Follow up, “Licking an Orchid” is what would qualify as a ballad for Tumor, with back up vocals by James K (real name Jamie Krasner). At its best, the album serves to expand the genres from which it mines its influences, while also serving as a template for combining personal history with the current climate of foreboding. There’s a sense — from its use of instrumentation and it’s varied sonic palette (there are programmed beats as on the club-friendly ‘Honesty’ while ‘Lifetime’ makes use of a rollicking drum line to propel the song and hold your interest mid-album) that Tumor has finally grown into itself. As his first major label release Safe hopefully portends more great music from Tumor. While his last two releases can confound (listeners who like this album should acquaint themselves with both 2017’s Experiencing the Deposit of Faith and 2016’s Serpent Music). Once labelled as an experimental musician, this album’s lasting legacy might just be how it’s allowed Tumor to morph into a musician who lives with his influences but also blends them into a heady cocktail of an album ­— one which changes course multiple times and yet remains singular and sometimes dark.