Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
Nourished by Time return with an experimental R'n'B album in which desire and disillusionment share the same groove
The press release for The Passionate Ones describes the latest record by Marcus Brown's Nourished by Time as a sermon “howled from the underbelly of late-stage capitalism.” Anyone who’s seen the Baltimore-born artist perform knows he has the magnetism of a preacher, and like any shaman worth his salt, he has a gospel to spread. However, this isn’t a fire-and-brimstone tirade but a soulful manifesto on how to stay human in a dehumanising world. Combining 90s R'n'B and synth-pop with an avant-garde sensibility, Brown crafts mid-tempo jams that map politics onto personal experience.
On the piano-led 9 2 5, he laments capitalism’s chokehold on creativity: 'You know he's got a purpose, but he's always working / Tryna beat the system, manifest a vision', his delivery, weary but resolute, like a man hastily writing down lyrics between shifts. Elsewhere, BABY BABY swings from wry romantic lines like 'I need a girl to cause a little civil unrest' to a gut-punch couplet that anchors the album’s politics: 'If you can bomb Palestine / You can bomb Mondawmin'. A work of emotional clarity and quiet resolve, The Passionate Ones is a timely reminder that tenderness can be its own form of resistance.
Listen to: 9 2 5, BABY BABY, Jojo