Piu Piu - Nightintale

Piu Piu occupies a uniquely 21st century niche, both in sound and story, that illuminates the brave new world of music--one that defies any real genre-definition, coloring both inside the lines and out, where anyone with an explorer's spirit can reconfigure the landscape just by putting two things next to each other that shouldn't be. Ostensibly hip hop with elements of trip hop and personal, indie-ish presentation, this "french uruguyan singer, songwriter and DJ based in Paris" picks and chooses from a familiar bag of tricks and presents them with differing emphases, with mixed, but overall positive results.

After a lulling spoken word intro, bouncy, sproingy bass anchors the first half of Nightintale, like hearing classic hip hop through the veil of the car behind you at the stoplight. This characteristic brings buoyancy to some of the heavier-handed elements of "Baller," and essentially double-bounces highlights like "The Melt II" and "Bussin At Em" right into radio-single-ready stratospheres. "Creep" lifts heavily from the TLC track of the same name, but it's not quite a sample, nor a cover, and that creeping (sorry) familiarity transforms what could have been a straight-edged tribute track into something spookier, like a half-remembered dream.

Another spoken word interlude kicks off the second half of Nightintale, where it melts into Portishead territory, slowing down the tempo and softening the spring of the rhythm section. One of the big boasts of Nightintale is a plethora of producers (including Grimes and Frank Ocean collaborator Ryan Hemsworth) who all bring a different sense of mood to Piu Piu's beat-based lounge-crooning. It's not a wide range, but it's the subtlety of the shifts in tone that work in making Nightintale feel like an album rather than a mixtape. The Hemsworth-produced "w_o" utilizes the (perhaps synthesized, but still) sounds of plucked strings and Radiohead-ready computer moans while Paris DJ Myth Syzer's "Red" slinks through your speakers with a saxophone backing track, and somehow none of this seems at odds with itself.

Heard out of context, a few of these tracks would fall flat ("Desire" particularly feels like some sort of atonal experiment that doesn't push the boundaries quite far enough), but as a whole Piu Piu's strong vocals and adventurous spirit bind the thing together. Reprising a first half highlight, "The Melt I" is a worthy callback that completely submerges the memory of the first track into a new world of kick drums and mandolin. And it's followed directly by "B.M.F.", which could easily be mistaken for a collaboration between James Blake and M.I.A. were it not for Piu Piu name-checking herself between badass posturing. It's this not-quite-jarring left turn sensibility that digs Nightintale a cozy niche in your mind and proves that sometimes even the smallest surprises can resonate the most.

---

Available via Bandcamp, or whispered softly into your ear as you drift through the dreamscape.