Merrill Garbus’s first three albums as Tune-Yards charted a journey from home-spun, lo-fi intimacy to confident, layered, studio-sculpted pop – a transition accomplished without compromising complexity or personality. This record, her fourth, consolidates that decade-long development. It’s an album brimming with energy, showcasing Garbus’s considerable vocal talent against a background of loose, rough-edged beats that could, in a pinch, be called house music.
I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life retains Garbus's characteristic lyrical directness which – like the project as a whole – remains just about sufferable. Not everyone could get away with singing about using her "white woman's voice to tell stories of travels with African men". Thankfully, the explicit self-consciousness – "I don't want to be a woman if it means not being human ..." – is tempered with hard-earned self-confidence, and not a little humour.
By the end, Garbus’s mix of far-flung dance gestures and world-questioning lyrics coalesces into beguiling logic. It’s never as simple as it seems on the surface.