Rest is a luxury. Or at least that’s what it seems to be. The way these days it’s quantified and sold back to you. You buy a watch or a ring or a gadget that promises to tell you how well you slept last night, by what hour you should be in bed, how active you were. Baths get photographed before anyone gets in, and a day off is seen as a reward to be granted only once a deadline is met. And rest is a solitary thing—it’s you in your bed, in your bathroom, or on the sofa. The people selling it to you won’t tell you that that’s not always how it’s been. It’s that kind of thinking that Nao gently pushes back against. On Autumn, the British singer’s latest set of songs about slowing down and healing from the things that have been bothering you, rest is a communal activity, a thing done with a group. Produced by bassist Dave Okumu and Nao herself, the fifth studio LP was recorded with a live band at the ready, a jazz-soul crew playing off each other and her distinctive soprano.
Bass players and drummers talk about finding the pocket, the sweet spot where the kick and the low end are working in tandem. It’s often one of those things that happens in a rehearsal room over months, the drummer moving back just a little to let the bassist step forward. On this one, Okumu and drummer Dan See find it quicksmart, locking into a rounded, syncopated line that the rest of the group builds on. The pocket is filled out with warm keyboard pads from Charlie Platt and Harvey Grant, Ben Jones’ clean electric guitar comping, and some delicious hand percussion from Crispin Spry Robinson. And it creates something you can sit back in, a laidback groove that means the singer can just float along the top, which suits Nao’s light, breathy voice perfectly.
On “Equinox,” it’s left to Nubya Garcia’s tenor sax to float along the top for a minute of relaxed swing with rim clicks on the backbeat, but it’s on “Burst” that Nao starts to explain what she’s trying to say. “I take time, take rest, blue sky/Rest easy, rest good, sleep, stay alive,” she orders, before some simple observations on the seasons, fall shedding and winter sleeping, and then “Autumn skin, autumn loves, autumn heals.” Between the verses, she sings that she feels good, then that she feels love, which makes her decide the love is real and let it burst. It’s a lovely arrangement, with her hugging the beat over Okumu’s ghost-noted bass line with its quirky slides, flanked by acoustic piano and two guitars, one clean and one effected.
A gorgeous, choir-like group harmony swells on the chorus, backing Nao’s exhortations to stay right here and let the rain clear. Then, in the second half of the song, the rhythm section kicks into a loose jazz-funk vamp, and the band takes it in turn to solo. It’s a cracker of a song, but the real beauty of Autumn is in those moments of collaborative rest, where she gives the stage over to the players. In the verse, she lists the kinds of rest she’s taken: a good sleep, a slow wine, a lover at her own pace. But in the vamp, she’s giving that rest to her bandmates, letting them do their thing over the groove that Okumu and See have built, the hi-hats ticking away sixteenths underneath.
On the lovely “Save the World,” Okumu puts down his bass for a fingerpicked guitar part, flanked by Grant’s ambient keys but no drums. It’s the perfect setting for Nao’s description of the party after everyone’s left. Nothing at the bottom of the bottle, glitter on the floor, smoke stuck over shots on the table, and she asks who’s going to save the world: “If there’s nobody else left, then I guess it’s up to me somehow.” There’s a genuinely funny-sad bit where she asks someone to find her a cape so she can wear it tomorrow, but it’s a gorgeous piece of writing, evoking the hangover blues perfectly. And Okumu’s guitar is great too, flexing his sense of time to suit the spacey feel of the track. “U R Loved” offers a reminder to someone who’s lost their way. Nao sings that she’s been feeling like she lost herself and needed reminding, that she doesn’t want her mind running on overtime, before the chorus kicks in with a mantra: “Know that you, know that you’re loved.” There’s not a lot to the words, but they’re backed with a gorgeous arrangement: a stacked call and response and a chant in low unison in the middle eight. It’s the group that rescues it, the reminder arriving in several voices at once.
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