ON RECORD
J
acob Collier is about as big as a
musician can get without having
a hit. But what the 27-year-old
has achieved in his decade in the
business is much rarer than that.
He has two legends, Quincy
Jones and Herbie Hancock, as mentors,
and Chris Martin and Hans Zimmer
queueing up to call him a genius.
He has stellar Gen Z social media
chops too, accruing millions of views for
his videos, in which he ranges around
the music room in his mum’s house in
north London, playing any number of
instruments and also objects — includ-
ing the five Grammys he has won.
There’s an arrangement of Lionel
Richie’s All Night Long on his second
album, Djesse Vol 1, in which a Grammy
forms part of the percussion track. “I
played it as an agogo bell!” Little bit of
a humblebrag there, Jacob? “It’s defi-
nitely a brag!” he says, laughing.
His story is now laid out in a fine
BBC Imagine documentary, In the
Room Where It Happens, named for the
space in which Collier has spent
most of his creative life. It was a
wildly inventive, multi-part
reharmonisation of Stevie Won-
der’s Don’t You Worry ’Bout a
Thing that he made here and
uploaded to YouTube when he
was 19 that earned him viral fame
and the mentorship of Jones.
He has a unique approach to
musical theory (he invented
something he calls the “super-
ultra-hyper-mega-meta-lydian”scale) and an instrument that was
developed at MIT just for him called
the Harmoniser, which enables him to
sing harmonies with himself, live.
Still, he is happy to have bust out of
the room. He is Zooming me from a
hotel in *comedy singing voice* “Ama-
rillo!”, ten dates in to a 91-date world
tour that arrives in Britain in June. Per-
forming live, this time with a six-part
band, is “immeasurably delightful”.
He has been sharing videos of him-
self “playing” the audience on Insta-
gram and TikTok, creating multipart
choirs by giving different sections of
the crowd different notes to sing and
then moving the sections up and down.
He is sampling the results and will
eventually create a 120,000-strong
choir for Djesse Vol 4, the final part of a
ballooning quadrilogy of albums.
Collier is, among other things, a
great musical communicator, which he
clearly owes to his mother, Suzie Col-
lier, a violinist, conductor and teacher,
who brought up Jacob and his two sis-
ters in an atmosphere of playful encour-
agement. “She trusted me and gave me
that lovely room to play and experi-
ment without telling me what to do.”
His father wasn’t on the scene: “I
haven’t had too much contact with him
for a while now,” he says, the only
point in our conversation when he is
less than effusive. However, in Jones,
Hancock and Martin, he has able depu-
ties. “People who show you the ropes
are not always in your direct family.”
He is particularly admiring of Mar-
tin. “We’ve collaborated on songs but
he’s mostly an amazing human being
and a role model for me,” he says.
Martin has called Collier the Mozart
to his Salieri. But it isn’t as clear cut as
that. Coldplay’s music is unremarkable
from a technical point of view but
moves millions of people. Collier’s
Djesse albums are technically amazing
but in the basic currency of a hit — well,
isn’t it about time he wrote one?
“Yeah, it would be fun, I suppose,”
he says. “But it could be equally detri-
mental if it wasn’t a song I loved. My
job is just to make the songs that feel
the most important to me. It was never
really the plan for me to be a pop star.”
And as the documentary makes clear,
he is committed to following his own
path, regular markers and categories be
damned. “I’ve always had a joyfulness
and a fearlessness,” he says. “What the
world needs now is joy. There’s a lot of
heaviness and suffering and division.
A word like harmony sounds trite
but it’s a huge thing in the world. If
there’s any way I can give that
back, it shows me I’m doing
something right.” cRichard GodwinImagine: Jacob Collier — in the Room
Where It Happens is on BBC1 at 10.40pm
tomorrow night. Collier’s UK tour begins
in Brighton on Jun 3 ( jacobcollier.com)Jacob Collier has won five
Grammys, is adored by QuincyJones and still lives with his mum
THE HITLESS
BOY WONDER
Colourful
character
Jacob Collier
and, below,
performing
in Los
Angeles in
April 2022POP & ROCK
CLASSICAL
ALBUM
OF THE
WEEKBeauty out of grief
Let’s Eat Grandma
Two Ribbons HHHH
TransgressiveShimmering
synths and
celestial
pastoralia give
the Norwich
duo’s third album the feel of
two records in one. One of
Two Ribbons’s greatest
achievements is that the join
between these two discrete
sound worlds slowly blurs, to
reveal a set of songs whose
contrasting textures cannot
obscure the unity of
emotional purpose and
courage. Written
during a period when
the near lifelong
friendship between
Rosa Walton and
Jenny Hollingworth
was buckling underThe Scottish
tenor returns
to Vaughan
Williams on a
disc full of
sharp insight, his effortless
fluidity drawing from familiar
works a fresh beauty. The
House of Life, with Julius
Drake a dependablyVaughan Williams
On Wenlock Edge,
Four Hymns, The House
of Life etc HHHH
Nicky Spence (tenor),
Timothy Ridout (viola),
Julius Drake, Piatti Quartet
HyperionBlossoms
Ribbon Around the Bomb
HHH
EMIThe Stockport band’s latest
album breezes by, running
up debts to Mike Scott, Paul
Simon, REM and Oasis, but
getting away with it through
the strength of its melodies.
Ode to NYC, The Writer, Born
Wild and Care For won’t
frighten the horses, but
they’re lovely for all that. DCTomberlin
i don’t know who needs to
hear this... HHHH
Saddle CreekWith nods to Joni Mitchell
and the Blue Nile, Tomberlin’s
second album is as
ensnaring as her debut. The
pastor’s daughter explores
faith, love and friendship, her
lyrics (“Always measure my
time by the way you spend
mine”) deadly, her talent
unfurling like a flower. DCthe strain of success,
separation and
misapprehension,
and in the wake of the
deaths of the latter’s
boyfriend and the
duo’s long-term
collaborator Sophie,
front-end songs such as
Happy New Year and
Watching You Go (all
babbling electronica and
busy propulsion), the
midpoint guitar swirl of
Insect Loop and later tracks
including the spare and
unblinking Sunday and the
title track itself address
and negotiate the fallout
and grief with
tenderness and
hard-won emotional
intelligence, set to
melodies at once
beautiful and bereft.
Dan Cairnsempathetic accompanist,
and Four Hymns, on which
Timothy Ridout’s viola is
anything but a second fiddle,
are especially haunting,
Spence’s occupation of text
and melody instantly
ensnaring. Even a song cycle
as established as the
composer’s AE Housman
settings offers up new vistas
here: Spence’s emphases
and timbre on From far, from
eve and morning is
another highlight on a disc
that is a worthy companion
to his compendium of the
great man’s folk song
arrangements. DC| MUSIC
HARMONY GERBER/GETTY IMAGES16 1 May 2022