Pop boasts few ascents more mercurial than that of Jacob Collier, the north London wunderkind whisked from YouTube videos to the care of legend Quincy Jones, thence to Grammy recognition and global adoration. Two years ago, In My Room announced an ambitious talent grounded in jazz and pop history. Djesse goes further, a quartet of albums written in 2018 with more instalments to come next year. We are promised “a grand tour through space and time”, but volume one is more a tour of Jacob’s record collection. Among influential guests are vocal harmony outfits Take 6 and Voces8, Gnawa drummer Hamid El Kasri, Laura Mvula and an overweight Metropole Orkest.
Predictably, Djesse falls foul of its own grandiosity. The opening dawn evocation is six minutes of shapeless a cappella. Its songs are jerked around by fussy arrangements and abrupt rhythm shifts. Collier’s voice is agile and tuneful but uncommanding – he prefers to hide in harmony vocals – while an enjoyably snazzy cover of the Police’s Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic underlines that he is yet to deliver a killer tune of his own. So far, Collier’s undoubted magic is only intermittent.
