Loyle Carner - hopefully !

On ‘hopefully !’, Loyle Carner has found more room to breathe. ‘hugo’ found him tightly wound, agitated and with ample reason to be. On his fourth album, he’s more undone. There’s a peacefulness and a keen need to be present and embrace moments of pause that feels like new ground for the artist, and that is immediately evident from the sun-soaked opener ‘feel at home’.

This newfound tranquillity does not detract from the meaningfulness of Loyle’s words; rest assured. It still hits equally hard, asking difficult questions and pondering difficult thoughts. There is a sharpness woven into the softer edges of the album, making it all the more striking. It’s less acerbic, but perhaps more striking for it.

‘time to go’ feels like the album’s mission encompassed. “All I can do is take it slow”, Loyle muses, and that’s exactly what the album allows you the space to do. It’s a quest to find a stream of light and hold onto it, even when times are turbulent and ever-changing and throwing challenges at you. It acknowledges that, and stresses the importance of pausing.

There are shades of his past work, of course - ‘horcrux’ and its shuffling percussive beats could easily slide into ‘Not Waving, But Drowning’. Yet, tracks like ‘strangers’ and ‘in my mind’ see Loyle choosing to sing on his tracks for the first time, and the innately soothing vocals beg the question of why this hasn’t happened earlier. It lends a serenity to the album that feels invigorating.

Though vastly different from its predecessors, in a way, ‘hopefully !’ feels like a celebration of an intrinsically Loyle Carner quality. Storytelling is at the core of this album, and it is sometimes questioning and infuriated and sometimes lullabic and still. From the beginning of his career, he has crafted these immersive, poetic worlds that demand to be heard. There is no distraction from that this time around. On ‘hugo’, the phrase “take these words and go forward” became something mantric. ‘hopefully !’ sees him use those words as a lifeline, treading onwards with a new levity in his step.