In crafting her self-titled sophomore album, Laetitia Tamko (aka Vagabon) was hyper-cognizant of how the context around her had changed. The unexpected success of her 2017 debut Infinite Worlds meant more resources at her fingertips, but also heightened scrutiny from a public that so often defaults to consuming black women as prophets of oppression and pain. “I was growing really weary of black sadness and seeing how it’s consumed,” the Cameroon-born artist said earlier this year. “I don’t want to romanticize being tortured.” she told Pitchfork.
Inevitably, Tamko was folded into the ongoing conversation about the scarcity of visible black women in indie rock—the only world she has known as a practicing musician, having emerged in New York City alongside artists like Frankie Cosmos. She could have dug her heels deeper into the sound that first won her acclaim, but Vagabon is instead a bracing departure, wielding digital sounds and strings alongside her familiar, delicate guitar in search of wider worlds.
Tamko produced the album herself and played most of it, and you notice immediately that her voice is subtly foregrounded. The beckoning whisper of Infinite Worlds has become rounder and more confident. This new boldness is matched by her production, which toggles between small-room intimacy and cathedral-sized grandeur. Tamko plays with all kinds of new palettes here, showing impressive mastery over them. On “Flood” and “Water Me Down,” she subsumes the bombast of ’80s and ’90s new wave into her quietly insightful writing. The heartbreaking “In A Bind” combines her tiptoeing acoustic guitar with a gospel choir and new age, “Orinoco Flow”-esque synth tones.
Throughout most of Vagabon, Tamko is not shouting to a crowd, but addressing one specific “you,” reassuring them of her love, pleading for them to stay, questioning their permanence, all in service of her own self-determinism. “I belong to no one/You tried hard to be mine/I won’t ask permission from you/We reserve the right to be full when we’re on our own,” she sings on “Every Woman.”
Tamko’s adventurousness is admirable, both lyrically and sonically, but occasionally the intimacy of her writing is overwhelmed by her surroundings. The layered arrangement of “Please Don’t Leave the Table” feels muddled, which obscures the simple, evocative chorus: “Please don’t leave the table I’m still eating.” It’s a rare misstep on an album that otherwise uses restraint to its advantage.
With its opening and closing tracks, Vagabon forms a sort of self-comforting loop. “Full Moon in Gemini (Monako Reprise)” takes the album’s opening track and tones it an octave down, turning the song from bright and hopeful to easy and accepting. The closed circle feels like a protective gesture, an act of will, a way to book-end her growth and frame it on her terms. With that transformation, Vagabon concludes as a work of not only personal self-discovery, but evolution in real time.
Buy: Rough Trade / Vinyl Me, Please
