Kae Tempest: The line is a curve

This review was published in ARTShub magazine

Kae Tempest at Perth Festival

The Line is a Curve at The Rechabite, Perth

I stood on the second-floor mezzanine balcony, a scene of people equally spaced out below me—impossible to tell who came with whom. The opening act left the square room semi-sedated; anything beyond a newborn sway would look out of place. Then, Kae Tempest took the stage.

They were framed by the image of a tall, leafless tree behind, and a spotlight in front. “My hope is that you are going to walk off with your spirits lifted.” Tempest spoke with the same eye contact you would expect from a lover, as if each word was a personalised gift to the people who stood before them.

Tempest performed their new album, The Line is a Curve, with a mirroring duality— everyday English culture slid alongside poignant spiritual concepts, and Tempest’s movements on stage brought the same disregard to taxonomy. At times, punching out lines from their chest and taking up space on the stage, a beat later, shaping their body into a slow curve of reverence with a stretched neck and upward gaze, as if willing the sun to break through the roof.

The way that Tempest used their body throughout the performance added layers of meaning to the album that you just can’t grasp for an audio-only experience. I watched as their hands shaped into a phone; shoulder blades folded into a depressive isolation. Arms butterflied open as if presenting a surrendered symbol of crucifixion. Crouched. Stretched. Folded. Their body became an instrument.

In this new album, Tempest stays true to their lyrical signature, exploring what it means to be alive. The work moves through loss and regret, to triumph and hope and back again. There are moments where these themes are brought to life in the micro—smoking backstage at a festival, in a bar, or walking down a suburban street. Then they pan out to the macro, taking us to the edges of nostalgia or a long-philosophised belief. These changes give Tempest’s storytelling a cinematic feeling as if we’re on a pilgrimage together.

Part slam poetry, part rap, part lyrical monologue; Tempest doesn’t seem to care to define. And neither do I. The words seem to live beyond any one category and, as each piece seeped into the next without borders, Tempest moved the group of us spectators closer to each other. There was a point in the night when I looked below me and the whole crowd, as if a group of dogs following a treat with their noses, nodded on cue to the repetition of “still time”. Yes, we have all felt like we’ve lost too much time, that we’re moving with the speed of failure, towards the things we don’t truly value. Yes, we want to feel more complete. We crave more desire, less deceit; less push, more flow. Kae Tempest made one out of a room of many.

With their final act, Hold Your Own, the audience’s faces weren’t backlit by phones desperate to capture the closing song; we were holding our foreheads, wiping tears, and kissing the cheeks of those we came with. Four generations deep, this audience was equally moved into a rare union. You could imagine it impossible to be angry at the post-gig traffic, or your favourite dumpling house that closed early that night. We had been given a renewed sense of aliveness, in all its embroidered tapestry.

That was the truth of it all. Tempest has created the kind of art that breaks you apart and leaves you to put yourself back together. Because you’re stronger now. They made you that way—in an hour and a half. And there’s still time.  

This review was edited and published by ARTShub magazine.