Tune-Yards I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life

From lo-fi world-folk singer to idiosyncratic art-rocker, Merrill Garbus has steadily evolved over the past decade, melding her penchant for glitchy beats and African rhythms with her powerful vocals and lurid melodies. Tune-Yards’ first release as a duo, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, brings bassist Nate Brenner to the forefront for an approachable and dancey follow-up to 2014’s Nikki Nack.

Following Garbus’ recent DJ foray, Tune-Yards still borrows from its worldly influences but adds dance elements like house- and club jazz-inspired rhythms. Album opener “Heart Attack” begins with an isolated piano riff, which is joined by Garbus’ signature syncopated delivery—“It’s giving me a heart attack-ack-ack”—ahead of an icy-smooth beat. A deliciously fun pace is then set for an album that dabbles in personal and political themes. “I use my white woman’s voice to tell stories of travels with African men” Garbus repeats on “Colonizer,” an awkward and (hopefully) self-aware statement on white feminism and appropriation from someone who has repeatedly drawn from African and black cultures. Tune-Yards has never sounded more relevant—or more accessible.