Jemere Morgan – Your Loving – Review

July 29, 2020

Jemere Morgan: Your Loving Single Review by Mr Topple for Pauzeradio.com.

After a touring hiatus, member of Roots royalty Jemere Morgan is back with a fresh single. Teaming up with one of the best production labels in the business has paid off in droves. Not that it’s a surprise, given their last collab together.

Jemere Morgan Your Loving, released via The Bombist & Gramps Morgan’s DadaSon Entertainment, sees Morgan and Grammy winning producers Bost & Bim once again join forces, after the success of 2019’s smash Troddin’. Matthieu Bost, is a force to be reckoned with – having done all the production and performed all the instrumentation himself. The end result is an ingenious arrangement which provides a fresh and Jazzy sound for Morgan to work with.

The track is ostensibly Roots in its basic instrumental elements. Keys performing a running bubble rhythm, their timbre sitting perfectly in the middle between high and low kHz – rich but not too resonant as to be dampened. The bass is traditional in its arrangement, working off a drop beat rhythm (missing the third), and melodically riffing across the root triad. Drums provide an unfussy one drop, with the kick and rim-clicking snare accenting the two and four while hi-hats tread a double time path. Additional brushes across what sounds like the snare, laden with reverb, also feature – bringing some anthropomorphic caressing to the track. Overall, the effect of the rhythm section in this instance is to provide a driving momentum for the track, which allows space for the other instrumental lines to be offset against this.

Jemere Morgan Your Loving’s opening kicks straight in with a melodica solo, running a countermelody to Morgan’s main line. What’s so clever about Bost’s arrangement is its use is not overkill: it returns for fleeting appearances on the chorus and bridge. This unfussiness is seen across the other lines, too – again reserved mostly for the chorus, including a synth horn (or so it sounds, it could be high-passed strings) arrangement, almost out of earshot with decay that flows in and out to create dream-like peaks and troughs. The sum of these parts is a smart arrangement which leaves the verses clear for Morgan’s voice, and creates a smooth, sensual chorus which sticks firmly in the memory.

But what’s perhaps most interesting about Your Loving is Bost’s chord progressions. He has avoided any semblance of standard Roots arrangements (root to major seventh, for example), opting for something far more Jazz/Blues-like. It predominantly works around the G minor root and then interestingly includes numerous progressions and key changes: including the major sixth; adding in the minor fourth and major fifth as bridging moves, and a major third for good measure. This Jazz/Blues feel is wonderful across the Roots orchestration. The mixing by Laurent Dupuy and mastering by Simon Capony is top-class, of course. And the whole package is an inventive platform for Morgan to bounce off.

Much like his family, he has a presence and voice which oozes Soul and style. It’s hard to describe the strongest elements of his voice, as it is consistently near-perfect. His range is unquestionable, sitting in a mid-to-upper tenor which is rich and clear throughout. Morgan’s ability to clip or extend notes to fit the composition is intuitive, and he has a natural way of using dynamics which demonstrates exceptional control over his voice – as he crescendos and calandos often across just one word or note. There’s also an audible sense of performance in his timbre, which leaps out of your headphones at you – accentuated not least by his variations in enunciation, being pointed where needed and smoothed-out at other times. Morgan is the consummate professional but also utterly authentic, too – a delicate balance which is struck perfectly here.

Your Loving is a scorching, summery track that takes Roots sensibilities and mixes them with delicious musical creativity to create a melting pot of sounds, that ends up being nearer Fusion Reggae-Jazz. Morgan is on-point, as always – and the end result is a very strong, musically compelling creation. Effervescent.