Anyone familiar with the range
Jessie Reyez
has shown since 2016 was not taken aback by news that the artist fought the pressure to make her first album a cohesive one. The uncommonly versatile singer and songwriter went multi-platinum in her native Canada with a sparse heartbreak ballad, "Figures." Its parent release, the
Kiddo
EP, also featured the glass-rattling "Gatekeeper" -- an alarming account of her experience with a sexual predator -- in which she sang from her perspective, and rapped and sang from that of the offender. She has co-written simple love songs like "One Kiss," a U.K. number one, U.S. Top 40 pop hit for
Calvin Harris
and
Dua Lipa
, and has also worked with
Romeo Santos
,
Eminem
, and
Sam Smith
. All of this has indicated that
Reyez
is a complex figure not cut out for unloading unified, easily digestible LPs.
Before Love Came to Kill Us
simply, if in a deliberately messy way, expands on her EPs, singles, and collaborations.
makes her entrance with "I shoulda fucked your friends" on the adult contemporary quasi-trap ballad "Do You Love Her," and just before the reappearance of "Figures" finishes with a comparably wholesome form of remorse on the gospel-tinged "I Do." The in-between highlights are just as scattered.
uses her voice as a protean instrument -- the settings of which include crooning child, squeaky-swaggering hedonist, high-velocity rapper, and raging
Gwen Stefani
-- and on the haunted ballad "La Memoria," she sings in her first language. Unsurprisingly, the emotions are varied and unfiltered.
is obsessed enough to "jump off the roof" (the
duet "Coffin"), willing to pledge her allegiance to
XXXTentacion
's "Fuck Love" ("Deaf [Who Are You]"), steadfast and grateful in the traditional ballad sense ("Love in the Dark"), and assertive in dominance ("Ankles"). That covers less than one-quarter of what
relates here. Although it's all over the place,
radiates conviction from front to back, and is without doubt a true representation of its creator. ~ Andy Kellman