Nao – Jupiter
Nao reckons with anxieties but embraces peace as the sultry and sweet meet in this loved-up odyssey
On her fourth album Jupiter, Nao is a smitten subject, and her sincerity and passion radiates like natural light filling a room. Wildflowers is a breezy, kick-drumming opener (‘If you really love me, then say you love me… / Time should wait for us but it won’t’), like Lovefool by The Cardigans but with the Damoclean threat of mortality. Wary of life’s eroding roads, she urges: ‘Catch me and I’ll catch you back / We’ll keep falling 'til the end of time’ – these wayfarer lovers will defiantly not run out of path!
Channeling the funk of Kali Uchis and Bootsy Collins, Elevate captures a rhapsodic episode of swimming through the cosmos: ‘We push through the stars, how you navigate’. Happy People’s vocal layering imbricates meditative gratitude, while Light Years’ adorable gloss is perhaps sentimental bait for a Samsung AI ad that incredulously invokes #ThePowerOfLove and #Family. 30 Something is a stripped-back recognition of growth, a changed-by-experiences big sister to SZA’s 20 Something, and the quirky promise of Better Days – ‘I’ll meet you on the moon with my red shoes’ – feels like Capra-meets-Lynch imaging.
Dulcet and sensitive, high on love and open to change, Nao expresses it all in vulnerable communion on Jupiter: the collapse, the calm, and the ascension.
Listen to: Elevate, Happy People, All of Me