On ‘The Future And The Past’, the singer continues down the same rich and luxurious musical path established on her acclaimed self-titled debut but amps up the banger count on some gloriously perky and poised funky cuts like opener ‘Oh My’ and the smooth, assured swing of single ‘Short Court Style’.
You can trace its musical roots, but The Future and the Past never feels self-consciously retro, never sounds like pastiche.
She needed to reconcile these new, charged numbers with what remained from her original sections, songs triggered by the end of a "toxic relationship." Remarkably, the finished album, The Future and the Past, threads this needle with aplomb, revealing a far more self-assured artist than the delicate torch-balladeer we first met on her 2015 self-titled debut.
There is evolution on The Future and the Past and a real sense that Prass has done what she set out to do: make an album that, like the work of Marvin Gaye, gets people thinking and resolving to take action, all the while shaking their hips to the undeniable groove.
Though she doesn’t shy away from the various ailments afflicting the world in 2018, Prass takes her conclusions to the dancefloor, not the barricades, foregrounding the medium rather than the message.
An impressive step forward, an album that finds Natalie Prass straddling the border between the future and the past, just as she promised.
Listening as Prass struggles through the muck, what’s clear is that The Future and the Past is really about the present—about finding ways to push through each day without giving over to despondency. This ship may be going down, but these songs are another set of buoys fighting to keep it afloat.
The Future ... cements Prass as one of this generation’s most promising musicians, able to scrap an entire album and birth such a compelling new one in its place. It doesn’t matter what the scrapped one sounds like, really: it feels like this is the album she was meant to make.
Natalie Prass’s voice is a lot more diverse this time around. Rather than sticking to her self-stylized sweet vulnerable tone throughout, it changes character and personality per song. It takes away her distinctive identity but creates an eclectic listen.
The Future and the Past has a glossy, nostalgic sheen, but that only makes Prass' messages about getting past the world's current ills land harder.
Over length of 12 tracks, the soul/G-funk stuff becomes a little one-note, while the Disney-fied material lacks the charm that makes Prass such an engaging, idiosyncratic performer.
#15 | / | The Guardian |
#15 | / | Under the Radar |
#24 | / | American Songwriter |
#28 | / | The Skinny |
#35 | / | No Ripcord |
#36 | / | musicOMH |
#58 | / | God Is In The TV |
#59 | / | Piccadilly Records |
#59 | / | PopMatters |
#69 | / | Uncut |