Hiatus Kaiyote
Love Heart Cheat Code
BRAINFEEDER/NINJA TUNE
How does an experimental, improvisational collective get hip enough to be sampled by The Carters (Bey & JAY-Z), Kendrick, and Drake, yet remain completely off the grid (and the charts) after 13 years and four albums? Like The Lounge Lizards and Bilal run through a pepper mill with notes of salted caramel and sriracha (or, more accurately, some head-rushing, avant-garde brand of neo-soul-prog-jazz-hop), the magnetically enigmatic Hiatus Kaiyote maintained a hot and sweetly abstract R&B soundtrack across their prior cinematic three-album catalog that drew the listener into their weird web of sound, no matter how repellent the outcome.
Love Heart Cheat Code, however, eschews the quartet’s improvisatory usual for something more planned-out, focused, and plastic-soulful. Produced by one-time fourth Beastie Boy and producer Mario Caldato Jr., the new record exists in a more settled place, with less anxious rhythms and less fractured lyrics. From the rubbed-hard R&B and romantic/platonic currency of “Make Friends,” to the glossily dramatic “Dreamboat,” to the spacey soul of “Telescope,” to the Mali-vibing “Cinnamon Temple,” these songs are less of a hardcore challenge to get through than, say, the whack tracks of 2021’s Mood Variant. And that’s good—even the relaxed-fit cover of Jefferson Airplane’s demanding psych-pop anthem “White Rabbit” that closes the album fits into the more easily melodic tenor of Love Heart Cheat Code.
Now, is being easier on the ear and cerebellum necessarily good? Maybe not so much on the conveniently poppy and immensely hummable “Longcat” and “Everything’s Beautiful,” and the smoothly operational, even earnest “How to Meet Yourself”—all of which are really good, but really out of place when you consider HK’s happily cluttered, clanging catalog. A few warmly embraceable earworms in a lifetime of messily improvisational masterpieces aren’t worth scaring off new listeners to Hiatus K’s impressively impossible catalog, though. Start here, and work your way backward.
