British dance producer Teisha Matthews, aka TSHA, exited 2021 with a much higher profile than the one she entered 2020 with. This might seem a curious state of affairs for a producer and DJ who specializes in dance-friendly jams—and who, like everyone else, saw her touring schedule canceled for the better part of a year. But TSHA’s music, unlike that of her clubbier kin, feels approachable, honest, and laden with pop hooks, going far beyond the ravenous demands of the dancefloor. Perhaps it’s not surprising that it prospered in a time of widespread emotional trauma, when so many people were looking for a friend.
Hard-won feelings abound on Capricorn Sun, TSHA’s debut album—from “Sister,” a song about Matthews discovering a half sister she never previously knew, to “OnlyL,” an ode, she says, to “changing the pace of life and focusing on the things that bring love and joy.” Matthews says that she tries to appeal to as many people as possible with her music, which she sees as “emotive and eclectic,” and this range is very much in evidence on Capricorn Sun. You can dance to TSHA’s excellently crafted house tracks, but you can also relate to them.
Capricorn Sun is stylistically diverse. TSHA casually throws house, UK garage, R&B, pop, and breakbeats into the mix, in keeping with the relaxed dilettantism currently heard across much modern dance music. Matthews grew up in a household of clubbers—DJ brother, ex-raver mother—and you can hear this familiarity in her work. This is a warm glow of a record, an album that reaches out to the listener without patronizing their tastes.
Extending the family feel, Capricorn Sun features a number of guest vocalists, including London duo NIMMO, Malian legend Oumou Sangaré, friend/producer Ell Murphy, and Mafro, who recently got engaged to Matthews—an interweaving of the personal and the professional that sits well on such a comfortably intimate record. The strongest song, “Sister,” is also the one that feels the most personal. Over a moody guitar lick, Bollywood-esque strings, and a sturdy house beat, Murphy sings, “Feels like I’ve just woken up/And I was always waiting for us,” with the unchecked joy of a dream fulfilled. It might not be TSHA’s voice, but the emotion is all hers—and, indeed, ours, if we have a heart to share in this perfectly constructed moment of dancefloor pop. “Power” pulls off a similarly emotional move, combining a judicious sample from “I’m the One” (an obscure tune by Paul Hardcastle’s 1980s funk band Direct Drive) with the suggestion of a breakbeat, French touch filters, and what might be steel drums, creating a perfect summer soundtrack with just a hint of autumnal melancholy.
Both songs largely confirm what we already knew: TSHA is capable of broad emotional strokes that can connect with an audience beyond dancers and club kids. “Dancing in the Shadows,” with well-traveled singer songwriter Clementine Douglas, suggests TSHA could go even further. Over a titanic breakbeat garage rhythm and Bicep-style stadium-house production, Douglas unleashes a brilliantly catchy pop vocal, both vulnerable and powerful; the combination suggests that TSHA could step up to festival headliner status with a few more such anthems under her belt. The song isn’t exactly subtle—a common trait on an album where song two, the galvanic “The Light,” already feels like a set closer—but you imagine future festival audiences will care not a jot.
TSHA says she envisaged Capricorn Sun as a way to get into playing live. The mix-friendly extended intros and lengthy instrumental passages that dominate many dance albums are replaced here by songs that make their mark in four glorious minutes, then leave triumphantly. This relentless buoyancy ends up a little overwhelming, occasionally spilling into blandness over the album’s 12 songs. But this is easily overlooked among the spell of familiarity that TSHA has spun. Capricorn Sun proves that in a world full of villains and blowhards, a little likability can go a long way.
