»Everlast« sounds, as if somone was staggering out of a club in the early morning hours, lighting a cigarette, walking straight through the desert and then leaving it with the plan to start a revolution. Content-wise, it’s close to M.I.A. here and there, leaving out the brightly colored hoods and the trumpets. Perera Elsewhere’s lyrics are clever and widely awake, however, wrapped in a nebulous dress and presented in a magically engrossed manner: She totters across the tracks, swaying forwards and sidewards. Her voice has a somewhat dusty grip – as if she was constantly being covered in dirt from the streets and the wayside; as if her voice was literally being crackled by a sand drift. »Everlast« is handwoven pop, produced minimalistically and organically – but first and foremost, it’s melodic. Many tracks come across as radio-hits but they feel like someone has found them on a hot attic in some random desert state. The whole record is as musical as it gets, which is even more surprising when considering the context: Normally, Perera shares her music with Robot Koch and Oren Gerlitz under the name of Jahcoozi; as a Djane her bass, dubstep, grime and house are definitely electronic-based, too. »Everlast«, on the other hand, is largely acoustic, the 808 takes a back seat. It twitches, jazzes and grooves here and there: one or two instruments setting the rhythm, some chirping details adding the atmosphere. The slight feeling that the record is dragging on a bit towards the end doesn’t change the fact that »Everlast« is an insider’s tip for this year’s best-of-charts.
Everlast
