Think Like A Key 2025
Kingdom Of Love
Seeking for truth in the farthest reaches of the earth, Tbilisian fantasist sees the stars closer to home.
Sculpting expectancy must be a sign of a true artist, and Nash Albert’s sophomore solo effort, "Yet" from 2022, showed his mastery of arresting imagery and sweeping tune; however, “Kingdom Of Love” doesn’t follow in its predecessor’s wake, preferring instead to chart a different course, with harsh reality seeping into what often ventures into the world of make-believe. Some of the album’s songs seem to bear rather banal titles, but that’s a clever deception on the musician’s part, because nothing on this record is bound to turn out the way the listeners may suppose it should: there’s always a twist to keep the audience hooked and eagerly waiting for a particular number to reveal all the little secrets concealed between lyrical and melodic lines.
One can find it easy to concentrate on the cosmic funk of “Professor Steiner’s Trip” where Nash’s going for conversational tone to move his story’s stylistic slant from Nashville to New Orleans – only the tense “Thought As Time” and the titular cut which bookend the platter with their folk-informed, deliciously exotic, vibrant mountain air are where Albert’s real heart is, his mellifluous voice warming the ether. That’s why the gloomy balladry of “Berlin Wall” which lets the singer lay down heavy, if intimately delivered, slabs of the Cold War dread before opening the piece to optimistic flight, would be offset by the upbeat groove of “Better Home” whose nervous riffs underpin a vertigo-inducing vista. One of the latter track’s couplets – “There is someone just like me / Searching for a passage to dimensions I can’t see” – will get echoed in the almost orchestral “Someone Else Is Me” which plumbs the depth of despair, and the celestial bodies of the cello-driven “Maya” which serenades someone extremely close to Nash will get reflected in the middle-of-the-road sway of “Around The Sun” and the “Strawberry Fields”-channeling “Stars”: so here’s a concept at work, with lizards lurking here and there to keep things interesting.
Factor in the urgency of pop-minded “Beautiful Day” and the tragic gorgeousness of “My Friend” – and “Kingdom Of Love” proves to be a riveting voyage into a sensitive person’s psyche. A nigh regal thing.
*****
