Yesterday's Gone by Loyle Carner - Review

Tracklist:

1.     The Isle of Arran

2.     Mean It In The Morning

3.     +44

4.     Damselfly

5.     Ain’t Nothing Changed

6.     Swear

7.     Florence

8.     The Seamstress (Tooting Masala)

9.     Stars and Shards

10.  No Worries

11.  Rebel 101

12.  NO CD

13.  Mrs C

14.  Sun of Jean

15.  Yesterday’s Gone

****

Loyle Carner is clean cut and not, what the game calls, “a typical looking hip-hop artist”. He oozes sensitivity and realness. He gives back to his community by offering cookery lessons to teenagers who, like him, suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Loyle Carner may not be your typical hip-hop artist to sing about sex in explicit detail or sexualise women through verse, but that is all a part of his charm.

‘Yesterday’s Gone’ is carved straight from Carner’s mind – from talking about student loans and tidying the flat with his cat. Carner’s music is nothing like his Top 40 “hip-hop” counterparts. It’s emotional and about real life occurrences, rather than the fantasy world that is made for artists of this genre. The melancholy tones of the album are emanated through the jazzy guitar/saxophone chords, making the sound reminiscent of the grey atmosphere of the streets of South London.

“Stop trying to be a fucking good Samaritan, just enjoy your life” tells one of his friends in ‘Rebel 101’ one of the non-musical interludes, framed more as a candid recording of a real life conversation rather than a set up. The album has a lot of moments filmed in real time, real life and far from glamorous settings, such as the text message that draws him away in 'Damselfly'. Mundane, humdrum yet incredibly genius, Carner tells us, in the most beautiful manner, that simplicity and realness is key.