Whether it's the kiss-off on "Frontline," or the unabashed come-ons on "Truth or Dare," Take Me Apart is a subtle, sexy LP from a woman who knows what she wants, and clearly aims to write anthems for fans feeling the same way.
Take Me Apart is well worth the wait. Working with a dream team of modern music makers—Arca, The xx's Romy Madley Croft, Kingdom and Ariel Rechtshaid—Kelela navigates from the abstract fringes of club music towards the pop center on her own terms.
On Take Me Apart, her first studio album, she takes the cerebral, corporeal world she’s built into the domain where it can historically live best: a new, outré, rhythmic pop galaxy that honors but outpaces its peers.
Take Me Apart is a multi-faceted sidewinder of a release that refines the aesthetics of Kelela’s previous projects and painstakingly marries them to exemplary result.
Take Me Apart may not appear as immediately interesting and unique as Kelela's previous work but there are layers upon layers of elements to be explored.
Kelela’s vocal stops Take Me Apart ending up as a fragmented series of sounds: consistently exquisite as it dances between lovesick confusion and shrewd sensuality.
It’s this invitation into her most confidential thoughts that makes the album equal parts sensual as it is unflinchingly confident, and it’s the ability to inhabit so many subtleties of the emotional turmoil of relationships that makes Take Me Apart such a memorable album.
Take Me Apart is a very spacious operation in which the 34-year-old ponders love, lust and hurt as soundbeds break down around her.
There’s another EP in here that’s every bit as good as Hallucinogen, but as an album, Take Me Apart remains more proof of Kelela’s talent and still-unrealized potential.
Take Me Apart isn’t always immediately gratifying, but in being loud in its vulnerability (and quietly radical for it), Kelela’s first album is a powerful addition to the feminist, futurist RnB canon.
For the most part, Take Me Apart is sonically more akin to a soundtrack, one for neon-tinged late-night driving. Or for bedrooms with ceiling mirrors — those slippery reflections…
#2 | / | Dummy |
#3 | / | Mixmag |
#4 | / | Cosmopolitan |
#4 | / | NOW Magazine |
#4 | / | Pitchfork |
#5 | / | Junkee |
#6 | / | Complex UK |
#6 | / | Dazed |
#6 | / | Highsnobiety |
#6 | / | Mashable |