COMETA

Album review

Following Small Things, a collaboration with Roy Nathanson utilizing the saxophonist's poetry, this is Nick Hakim's third proper solo LP, his first since Will This Make Me Good. Cometa, Spanish for kite, symbolizes the out-of-body sensations experienced by the singer/songwriter in a romantic, life-affirming relationship that powers the album. His lyrics from front to back tick all the boxes for ways of conveying the feelings of disorientation and obsession that come with an intense courtship. As common as they are, they seem to flow out of Hakim like wisps. Certain scenes are depicted more distinctively. "Perfume," a dazed saunter, catches Hakim intoxicated by the scent of his lover's sweatshirt as he wears it during a period of longing. Up all night in the feathery ballad of surrender "Happen," he watches "the sun scan her body." Hakim and his band cook up more trippy amalgams of soul, folk, and jazz that play out most often in slow motion, sometimes approaching or sustaining a light gallop, never more forceful than a psychedelicized judder that characterizes the blissfully escapist "M1," one of two tracks co-produced by horizon-broadening new associate DJ Dahi. Sonic continuity with Hakim's past is further assured by the presence of many longtime collaborators, and the others who enter their orbit (Helado Negro co-writes a song gently shaded in by his synthesizer, and guitarist Arto Lindsay contributes to the bugged-out dishevelment of the opener) comport themselves well. Rarely deviating from a mix of elation and stupefaction, Cometa doesn't have the range of emotions examined on Green Twins and Will This Make Me Good, but frayed-nerve howls, phrases of distress -- anything other than loved-up susurration -- would have disturbed the groove.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo