Bilal A Love Surreal 2013
Christal Rasband
A Love Surreal explores different stages of love in a cycle of slow-burning songs that Bilal wrote with female listeners in mind. The songs abandon the personal and societal themes of Airtight's Revenge in favor of lyrics about cultivating a romance and meditative laments on its dissolution. Musically, Bilal wanted to make the album sound multidimensional and drew on the surrealist art of Salvador Dalí for inspiration, while incorporating sounds from R&B, funk, jazz, rock, hip hop, electronica, and psychedelic music.
A Love Surreal comprises a cycle of slow-burning songs about different stages of love, including infatuation, seduction, romance, estrangement, longing, recovery, and solace.[12] Bilal's intimate lyrics address love's ephemeral nature and how to sustain happiness.[10] The album veers between danceable, upbeat songs about cultivating a new romance and bluesy, meditative songs about how romances dissolve.[1] In contrast to Airtight's Revenge, A Love Surreal deals more with feelings of lust and flirting rather than personal and societal issues.[8]
The album's opening series of songs have straightforward lyrics, according to Phillip Mlynar of Spin.[17] On "West Side Girl", Bilal flatteringly remarks on his date's shoes, backed by a bubbling funk groove. The next song, "Back to Love", draws on the music of Prince, while the jazz guitar licks of "Winning Hand" draw influence from Steely Dan.[18] "Climbing" has a rugged beat and a lyrical allusion to The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1993 song "Party and Bullshit".[17] The middle section of the album explores broader emotions and themes of loss and lament.[17] "Slipping Away" is a slow-building meditation on loss,[10] with sentimental music backing the narrator's plea to a departing love.[17] On the slow burning pop rock song "Lost for Now",[19] he comes to terms with being alone and leaves town, but finds salvation in "a smile that changes everything" as the song closes with a shimmer of cymbal.[17] The stark ballad "Butterfly" is built around Bilal's soaring falsetto and Glasper's rippling piano.[18] Its music explores jazz,[10] and also features dreamy Moog accents.[8] The album closes with lyrics about the promise of tomorrow: "Woke up this morning to the sound of a bluebird singing / Suddenly I knew just where to begin / Something so simple / How can it speak so loud to me?"[17]
Bilal Oliver's music is funky like that. The Philadelphia-born artist, a key collaborator in the progressive Soulquarians community with edge-walking artists like Robert Glasper and The Roots, specializes in lush, trippy songs best enjoyed on a lazy afternoon. Bilal can play the standard soulful stereotypes, crooning like a loveman or shouting heavenward as his longtime band puts down a danceable beat. But he prefers to go inside, exploring the contours of intense emotions with patience and psychedelic insight.
A Love Surreal, Bilal's fourth studio album, cultivates the stratospheric vibe of John Coltrane's spiritual jazz masterpiece, A Love Supreme, which inspired its title. Most songs here float around as if in zero gravity, anchored by subtle melodic hooks and producer Steve McKie's gently assertive drums. Bilal's tenor, taut and shiny as copper wire, spins out stories of complicated love. "Winning Hand," with its paranoid edge, recalls vintage D'Angelo; the druggy "Climbing" could be a lost Sly Stone cut; the bubble-machine beats of "West Side Girl" nod slyly toward Prince. Playing with these influences, Bilal always remains his own man, his vision grounded in fierce intelligence and a commitment to letting stories unfold all the way to their sometimes sorrowful, sometimes orgasmic end.
With February just around the corner, Bilal unveils the Salvador Dali inspired album cover for his third studio album, A Love Surreal. The album cover and artwork was shot by famed photographer, Marc Baptiste, and presents a modern twist on the surrealist paintings crafted by Dali. The LP will hit stores February 26, you can pre-order A Love Surreal HERE.
INDY WEEK: Your new album is named A Love Surreal. When I think about surrealism and music, improvisation and genre-mashing come to mind. How do you apply surrealism to love and your own music?