Ready reckoning

Kimbra's new collation and Silk Cut's arresting debut.

- GRAHAM REID

A RECKONING, by Kimbra

Pop may be mostly about instant gratification, but it can also be surprisingly enduring. Gotye and Kimbra’s Grammy-winning Somebody That I Used to Know is more than 10 years old, but her vocal as the emotional pivot remains compelling even now.

Somebody wasn’t the first, nor the last, recognition for her flexible voice and sophisticated songwriting (she’s won seven music awards in this country), but it gave her a platform and opportunities.

She used them to move further from the mainstream into ambitious art-pop on 2018’s Primal Heart, some of it influenced by trips to East Africa working with an organisation helping women and children with HIV.

At heart, she was still a pop artist, but of a more mature, less instant gratification kind.

Her fourth album, A Reckoning