Album Of The Week: Kelela Raven

It doesn’t feel like Kelela has been away for five and a half years. Maybe that’s just because the rest of the world hasn’t quite caught up with her yet. On her 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me, Kelela Mizanekristos established a sound, a mood, and an idea. She sang with soft, yearning power over sharp, architectural dance tracks, and she sounded like an emissary from a better future. Over her next two big releases, the 2015 EP Hallucinogen and the 2017 album Take Me Apart, Kelela developed and refined that approach. And then: Nothing. Over the last half-decade, though, Kelala’s few records, so artfully conceived and executed, never lost their sting. They remain as striking and absorbing and ever, and they still move bodies.