REVIEW: Mortimer – From Within

This review was first pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2024 (RIDDIM 04/2024).

Label: Overstand / Easy Star

Text: Davide Bor­tot

As if one still need­ed to say it out loud: we’ve all known since ”Light­ning” that Mortimer’s music comes from deep with­in. It’s one of the most mov­ing – and in many ways one of the deep­est – love songs ever writ­ten, and the fact that he cre­at­ed this track, his defin­ing track, a full five years after his offi­cial debut speaks vol­umes about who Mor­timer is. In search of lost time? Mor­timer isn’t search­ing for any­thing, he rather accepts that the spir­it has to find him: that true art can only emerge from a true moment.

That moment has final­ly arrived. Anoth­er five years after ”Light­ning,” the accom­pa­ny­ing album is here – ”accom­pa­ny­ing” in the sense that the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty mak­ing that song so spe­cial is the same ener­gy that shapes ”From With­in.” That is Mortimer’s great con­tri­bu­tion to the evo­lu­tion of reg­gae: he’s added a new facet of mas­culin­i­ty to a genre still marked by archa­ic rit­u­als and rigid ideas of strength. He’s made it – as one might say today – a lit­tle less tox­ic.

The album opens with two clas­sic con­scious tunes, ”In My Time” fea­tur­ing Dami­an Mar­ley and ”Bruis­es” with Kaba­ka Pyra­mid and Lila Iké. They cov­er dis­crim­i­na­tion and false nar­ra­tives as tools of pow­er, post-colo­nial trau­ma and struc­tur­al racism as the ongo­ing after­shock of slav­ery. These are typ­i­cal reg­gae themes, but Mor­timer approach­es them in his very own way. Instead of pos­ing as the all-know­ing reveal­er or hyper-potent avenger, he speaks with unflinch­ing hon­esty about the pain and scars he him­self car­ries. On ”Not A Day Goes By,” he becomes even more explic­it about his per­son­al abysses and men­tal strug­gles.

But ”From With­in” isn’t all dark­ness. On the con­trary: ”Slow­ly” is a song for the love of his life, and a touch­ing dec­la­ra­tion of devo­tion. On ”My Child,” Mor­timer tells his chil­dren that every­thing can (!) turn out alright: ”The pain is not the ene­my, grow stronger from the hurt.” And toward the end of the album, there’s a series of songs that wres­tle with the exis­ten­tial impor­tance of per­son­al growth. It’s this dialec­tic that defines ”From With­in”: yes, there is dark­ness, but there is also light. Despair and hope. Fragili­ty and ground­ing. Wounds and heal­ing.

Musi­cal­ly, too, the album brings togeth­er dif­fer­ent moods and tem­per­a­tures. In close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mor­timer him­self, pro­duc­er Win­ta James (for the unini­ti­at­ed: Dami­an Mar­ley, Chronixx, Pro­to­je, Jesse Roy­al, Samory I – you get the idea) has cre­at­ed his mas­ter­piece here. With­in his guid­ing idea of con­tem­po­rary soul rebel music, every rid­dim, every arrange­ment, every sound feeds into the mes­sage of each song and the arc of the album as a whole. When Mor­timer revis­its his child­hood on ”Bal­cony Swing,” it sounds like a Sun­day after­noon on an imag­i­nary ‘80s radio sta­tion. The rela­tion­ship song ”Rather Be” trans­ports Jen­nifer Lara’s lovers-rock clas­sic ”I’m In Love” into the now. The for­ward-look­ing ”My Child” rides on a no-non­sense step­pers beat. And toward the end, as despair slow­ly dis­solves into con­fi­dence, Win­ta even pulls a sev­en-minute dis­co-reg­gae jam. On top of that, there are three dub ver­sions by Tip­py I Grade, who quite lit­er­al­ly can­not miss right now.

An epochal album from one of the most impor­tant singers of our time. Any­thing less would not do.

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