It’s been four long years since Dijon’s dazzling, emotive debut album ‘Absolutely’ proved him a generational talent. In the time since, he’s cultivated an enigmatic reputation, emerging only occasionally for the odd feature or songwriting credit. This year, however, momentum’s been building again. A striking spot on Bon Iver’s ‘SABLE fABLE’ in April whet the appetite. Last month, extensive contributions on Justin Bieber’s ‘SWAG’ turned heads in the mainstream, while a surprise cameo in the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film One Battle After Another left fans intrigued.
Dijon’s full-scale comeback ‘Baby’ could not be better timed, then. Nor, of course, could the pressure be more intense. Having made no secret of his perfectionism in the past, however, the Baltimore musician rises to the occasion and then some. Released as a whole, without preliminary singles, this is not just an assured follow-up, but a restless one too, brimming with ideas, constantly pushing the boundaries of songwriting and production.
Take opener ‘Baby!’ for example. On the surface, it’s a silky-smooth ballad in the vein of Prince at his most sensual, but its slow groove is constantly being manipulated into stranger territory. Every now and then the beat cuts out or flips back on itself. Halfway through, it fades into a distant bassy reverberation as Dijon’s voice descends to just a whisper, before rising back to the foreground on the back of twinkling glitched-out electronics. At the close, it shapeshifts into another beat entirely – a little snippet of woozy psychedelic hip-hop.
‘Another Baby!’ follows, shifting up-tempo into infectious ’80s-tinged funk. Again, it’s Dijon’s refusal to let things settle that stands out the most, the constant layering of vocals, the plunging piano chords deployed for just a few seconds. As the opening track titles suggest, these dramatic emotional swings mirror those that come with parenthood. The record was written and recorded mainly in isolation at home, as Dijon grappled with the drama, ecstasy and anxiety of becoming a father for the first time.
The rest of the record continues along these lines, Dijon throwing idea after idea at his songs and finding that almost all of them stick. On ‘FIRE!’, tender piano chords are interrupted by vocals scorched in feedback, before slipping into a chaotic and skittering beat and then landing on a brief snippet of a capella gospel. On the moody drift of ‘Loyal & Marie’, the sound of a barking dog is mutated into a screech of noise. Album standout ‘Automatic’ skips back and forth between muddy bass and euphoric, glistening synths.
‘Baby’ flickers between high and low fidelity, sometimes delivering slick multi-layered pop, sometimes pushing feedback to the point it frays at the edges. But what’s really remarkable about the album, however, is how coherent it is, thanks to the fact that Dijon is just as proficient with the foundations of pop songwriting as he is with experimental production. Though there’s always a lot happening on the surface, at the core of ‘Baby’ are songs so finely hewn that they’re never overshadowed.
