Jacob Collier is back with his third single for his upcoming multi-album project, Djesse Vol. 3. In the same vein as the previous tracks released from the album, Time Alone With You and In My Bones, this song pulses in electric beauty, which is very jarring when you compared it to his other work from last year’s Djesse Vol 2, such as Feel and It Don’t Matter.

On the surface, All I Need is a pop anthem. The song begins with a keyboard chord melody soothing the listeners, only to be jarringly brought into the groovy soundscape with a strong slap bass carrying Jacob’s voice forth. The rest of the song is filled with plenty “Jacobian” treasures, such as multiple layers of jazz harmonies, complex rhythms both in the forefront and the background, and intricate production choices sprinkled all throughout the track. Mahalia’s introduction into the track feels so right, like the true continuation of Jacob’s first verse. She takes the forefront of most of the song, until Ty Dolla $ign comes in with his part. On first listen, it might seem a bit jarring to hear such a powerful, auto-tuned voice come in with beautiful vocal runs, at the expense of being quite lyrically shallow, but Ty’s surprising appearance serves wonderfully to the beauty of this track, and to the primary theme for All I Need: subverting expectations. The existence of this track alone is a testament of that theme: never would anyone have expected Jacob to release such a pop-inspired summer tune. 

Regardless of the circumstances, this is a fantastic, if not shockingly surprising, track coming from one of modern Jazz’s greatest talents. This song proves that Jacob can break musical barriers like no other artists have done before. He’s proven that since the beginning of his career, but this song delves into territories incredibly foreign even to both his background and his audience, all the while maintaining the charm a typical Jacob Collier song would have. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the best track to come out of Djesse Vol. 3, since the bar set by this song is so incredibly high. This is, however, Jacob Collier, and he is truly the only one that would be able to top his own song within the same album.

 jazz    singer-songwriter 

Author: Nicholas Gaudet

Music producer and writer from Dieppe, Canada.