The Boy Who Played the Harp – Dave
‘Eight more sleeps ‘till Dave drops boys’ – a sentence that could tranquilize a rhino. Despite surviving a wave of enthusiasm that could rebrand Jack Dee as chirpy, here we are. I was preparing to write about Led Zeppelin or The Who, but I seem to have pulled a complete and dumbfounded u-ey. I guess with all the musical grave digging I was excited by a pulse, even that of Dave’s. Dave is a victim of his own hype, trampled under the lofty assertations of hip-hop bystanders and playlist personalities. But this criticism comes from a place of love. I feel a paternal desire for Dave to fulfil his potential, if you’ll excuse the underselling. He’s been the best lyricist in the UK for almost a decade and makes genuinely thought-provoking performance pieces. But separating the awe-inspiring performance piece from the repeat value of a song is a daunting mountain range that I cannot summit. But the prospect of change and growth (AKA James Blake saying the album was some dope ass shit) has encouraged a return to Dave’s music with an open mind.
There’s a lazy comparison between ‘The Boy Who Played the Harp’ and ‘The Life of Pablo’ as Dave balances his religion with ego, lust and ambition. But whereas Kanye revels in his humble belief that he is this Saintly Escobar-Picasso incarnate, Dave is still grappling with his fate. Now I’m no reverend, but I recognise the album title is a reference to King David. Dave feels the full weight of this comparison, seeing it both as his duty and destiny to soothe the world’s ills with his ‘harp’, or more plainly his music. The title track explores Dave’s desire to positively impact this generation and lead his ‘people’, following the blazing trails of his ancestors and idols. But he is under no Louis Vuitton Don-esque delusions of grandiosity, approaching the subject with condemnation and self-doubt as he struggles between playing ‘the hero and the villain’ (the indulgence of the latter would go some way to justifying the frequent one-handed writing). ‘175 months’ is a dismantling of Dave’s humanity which fails to fill the image he demands of himself as a Christian, laid on a beat as mercurial as dappled light through stained glass. There’s a beautiful segment, and personal highlight, about his mother anointing him in his sleep. Close, but no bleached arsehole. ‘Selfish’ and ‘My 27th Birthday’ are back-to-back hypocrisy exhibitions that dissolve Dave’s ego in an act of extreme catharsis. But perhaps the album title’s past tense is key here. There’s a phantom thread running throughout the album that connects each track together and back to that initial biblical passage. That ethereal beacon on the album cover is the result of a soul reconstructed over 10 tracks. At least, that’s what my empathy is telling me.
The Dave enthusiasts will be familiar with the ‘album mode’ litmus test. He has an analogue approach to song craft. The singles are bravado fuelled bangers and the album tracks are often solemn examinations of life and self. Perhaps that’s why ‘Chapter 16’ is my favourite track. It fits into neither category. Dave sounds genuinely content without hiding behind cocksureness, earning his seat at the table with an in-form Kano. It sounds like a cross between Donnie Brasco and Tiny Desk. I always find that it rains the morning after a night worth remembering, like all the pent-up emotion bursts out and washes the Earth clean. The piano trickles over this track like that rainfall, as though it has known countless lifetimes. Sprinkle some James Blake on to taste, and it’s no wonder why I have a new answer to the question ‘when was the last time that you cried’? But the sad reality is – and Dave says it himself – this song makes me miss Kano. Only a direct rude boy could kick off a verse with ‘mic check, one, two, free school dinners’.
Dave could be doing a champagne shoey on top of my rap podium if he was simply braver with his production, but this is a naïve fantasy. Dave raps like foxes fuck, demanding every word be heard, every triple entendre to make direct, hammer-on-anvil impact. He usually employs this stark and sedated piano that shoots for emotional heft and lands on coma-inducing drawl. It can sound like some bloke tuning up on an open piano as it rarely develops into anything more expansive. But David has got savvy. He doesn’t find his Madlib exactly, but James Blake and Jim Legxacy both have a knack for drawing the last reserves of emotion from the scantily clad beats Dave favours. They give the album a sonic cohesiveness and delicacy. Especially Blake’s hum which could make teleshopping sound hymn-like. Unlike ‘3x’ which sounds like Dave doing ‘Skeptacore’, Jim and Dave have improved chemistry on ‘No Weapons’. It perfectly captures that boyhood invincibility, that all-consuming elation that finds you in the Summer between the end of school and the rest of your life.
The albums weakest points are deviations from this production. In true Cheddar Bob fashion, Dave possesses an unfortunate ability to seppuku his own brilliant writing with obvious and immature production and songwriting choices. Some past instances are so raw that I can still hear them knocking like sonic bailiffs come to confiscate my joy. That condescending beat switch in ‘Psycho’ which is as subtle as a monobrow. Or the unironic gimmick ‘Twenty To One’ that makes a compelling argument for capital punishment. There’s nothing here that’s as immediately offensive, but at the album’s most uninspired, Dave is just recycling tracks. ‘Raindance’ is sure to initiate a few rallies of tongue tennis, but I’ve heard Dave (and every other UK hip hop artist) take the bish-bash-bosh approach before. It’s ‘Lazarus’ 2.0 which is ‘Location’ 2.0. If the album was the cast of ‘Goldmember’, then this track would be Beyonce. I also have a gripe with the random female vocals on ‘Fairchild’. The motif is cheap and overplayed, especially in Dave’s catalogue (‘Two Sides of A Smile’ and ‘Leslie’). ‘Marvelous’ is the most recent verruca to be birthed from Dave’s melodic storytelling style. These tracks almost always sound phoned in and feel as though they’ve been preened for live orchestra. Like those Doechii performances where the instrumental is led by the choreography. There’s more than enough lyrical chicken feed here to satisfy the Lost In Vegas’ of the world. But ‘The Book of Samuel’ wasn’t written in Crayola.
To steal a phrase coined by Skepta, I feel as though Dave suffers from ‘underdog psychosis’. He always seems to be chasing his idols and somehow comes across as a boyish underdog despite once being the embodiment of that infamous Mobb Deep lyric; ‘I’m only 18 but my mind is older’. Perhaps my youth makes me biased. I used to bang Dave’s singles back at school, and whilst those moments make me smile, I can’t listen to ‘Funky Friday’ or ‘Thiago Silver’ without being hit with a full-frontal tsunami of social embarrassment and lack of confidence that marked that time in my life. I remember Dave at the BRITs playing a fire shooting guitar and he just looked awkward. Not that that’s my general benchmark for self-confidence, but he didn’t buy the ‘rockstar’ he was trying to portray. It feels as though Dave has to make tracks like ‘History’ to convince himself of his own greatness. I’m not saying he isn’t, but I get the impression that he thinks he isn’t, and that it bothers him. But perhaps that’s a glimpse at the very ego that Dave is attempting to remould. I guess I only have one real criticism then – where’s the bloody harp?
