Navy Blue’s new album is called Memoirs In Armour, but it’s more like memories in mist. Over the course of about 27 minutes, the Brooklyn-based spitter shrouds fractured recollections in floral, imagistic poetry, leaving listeners to sift through the dense metaphors to find the trauma and catharsis at the center. With its blend of hazily soulful production and esoteric self-created truisms, the LP plays out like an audio cipher; he unspools personal vignettes in layers of thoughts and sensations he leaves you to peel back. Like the best riddles, it’s all as tedious as it is engrossing, further evidence of the rhyme prowess that’s made him a face of New York’s underground vanguard.
With its blend of meditative jazz and Navy Blue’s deliberate monotone, Memoirs in Armour can feel like a trance. The bars themselves are like a maze, with each seemingly straightforward sentiment abruptly shifting to a new wall of symbolism for you to navigate. And then another appears. For the Chuck Strangers-produced “Boulder,” Navy unloads a “Nas Is Like” micro-mediation on life and death before finding a tricky way to tell a one-time friend they’re going to hell: “That nigga did his dirt in secret, I’ll let karma whoop him/ Where it took him ain’t no secret, it’s an art to being decent.” Like Ka, Roc Marciano, or billy woods, Navy’s mastered the art of slick implication, which helps him avoid cliches while demanding a level of close reading from the listener. Like life itself, it leaves you playing cat and mouse with the idea of meaning.
At their most poignant, songs from Memoirs in Armour collapse the distance between spirituality, love, and family, rendering them all in a painterly mosaic of pain and healing. On the Child Actor-produced “Low Threshold,” he packs a Moses metaphor into a tale of God, familial bonds, and the looming inevitability of death. Floating over foggy morning piano keys, he shifts between self-analysis and religious imagery so seamlessly, it makes the world’s flaws and his own interchangeable; when he says, “Don’t you fall into that abyss,” he could be talking about loved ones, himself, or future listeners who stumble to the edge of madness. It’s universal in the way most competent proverbs are.
Navy Blue’s abstract lyricism gets a big assist from the production, which comprises ethereal jazz and soul soundbeds. The former adds splashes of surreality that only enhances Navy’s metaphysical ruminations. The Navy-produced “Slow” sees Navy stutter through ghostly vocals and somber piano for a track that sounds like a personal seance for repressed memories; he skitters from moment to moment as if he’s trying to grab hold of them before they dissipate. “Say The Word” conjures much the same effect, with the ’70s soul sample embedding the track with a nostalgic ambiance designed to frame pained reminiscences. “Smoke will cover up the pain, I saw my father burn/ Spliff after spliff, in the crib, I would watch and learn,” Navy spits over the track, recalling a drug habit that was passed through generations like an heirloom. Through all of his personal exploration, Navy hopes to find his way through the smoke clouds: “On the verge of breaking through, I’m tryna break these curses.”
Navy Blue’s poetry is powerful, but sonically speaking, I wish there were more radical sounds at play. Like other neo boom bap aesthetes, he’s forged a perfect symbiosis with his vocals and the beats he coats them with, which makes it all cohesive. That signature sonic imprint can push the line between seamless fluidity and flatout monotony; the album’s main weakness is that eight out of the 10 tracks seem like they stay at the same exact tempo, and no one hook manages to be anthemic. In this vein, Armand Hammer’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips feels like the best coordination of aesthetic and tonal shifts to keep you on edge along with their cutting-edge songwriting.
Memoirs in Armour itself isn’t a breakthrough as much as it is a reminder of Navy Blue’s consistency. Through numerous projects, his pen remains as understated and impressionistic as ever, leaving fans with a labyrinthine playhouse to navigate through several listens. Once again, the puzzle is about as fun as it is rewarding.
Memoirs In Armour is out 8/2.
Other albums of note out this week:
• JPEGMAFIA’s I Lay Down My Life For You
• Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival (Killer Mike)’s Songs For Sinners & Saints
• The Smashing Pumpkins’ Aghori Mhori Mei
• WHY?’s The Well I Fell Into
• Orville Peck’s Stampede
• Blood’s Loving You Backwards
• X’s Smoke & Fiction
• Tenue’s Arcos, bóvedas, pórticos
• J.R.C.G.’s Grim Iconic…(Sadistic Mantra)
• Swami & The Bed of Nails’ All Of This Awaits You
• Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin
• I Love Your Lifestyle’s Summerland (Torpa Or Nothing)
• G.O.O.N.’s God’s Only Option Now
• Anberlin’s Vega
• Khalid’s Sincere
• 49 Winchester’s Leavin’ This Holler
• Simon Fisher Turner’s Instability Of The Signal
• 86TVs’ 86TVs
• Elsy Wameyo’s Sinner
• Joe Ely’s Driven To Drive
• Cowboy Boy’s Lipstick On A Pig
• Los Lonely Boys’ Resurrection
• Personal Trainer’s Still Willing
• Nick Zanca’s Hindsight
• ZEBEDEE’s Going Nowhere Fast
• Chrystabell & David Lynch’s Cellophane Memories
• Lucy Sissy Miller’s Pre Country
• Zack Clarke’s Plunge
• Brigitte Calls Me Baby’s The Future Is Our Way Out
• Tomin’s Flores Para Verene / Cantos Para Caramina
• Tones And I’s Beautifully Ordinary
• 137’s Strangeness Oscillation
• Shadow Knell’s Shadow Knell
• Mechanical Canine’s To My Chagrin
• Sugarhill Ddot’s 2 Sides Of The Story
• Pixey’s Million Dollar Baby
• Cowboy Boy’s Lipstick On A Pig
• Burna Boy’s No Sign Of Weakness
• Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour (10th Anniversary Edition)
• Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Into The Well deluxe album
• Footballhead’s Before I Die mini album
• Moses Sumney’s Sophcore EP
• Hotline TNT’s Somersault EP
• Two Shell’s Round EP
• Maren Morris’ Intermission EP
• Poison Ruïn’s Confrere EP
• Savings’ How Do You Feel? EP
• Casino Hearts’ Lose Your Halo EP
• Sonagi’s Everything Is Longing EP
• Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals’ Give An Inch EP
