Colouring
★★★★
Love To You, Mate
BELLA UNION. CD/DL
Jack Kenworthy’s contemplative follow-up to 2019’s Wake.
Love To You, Mate positively aches. Its gently ticking over, purring electronica is a product of anguish and desolation. It chronicles the loss of Greg Baker, the brother-in-law of Colouring’s Jack Kenworthy, to cancer in 2021. The title track cuts completely to the chase, recounting the strange, almost otherworldly normality and sense of calm that can descend on a family when something of that magnitude arrives. As an example, For You captures the emotions when the diagnosis was received. However, Love To You, Mate is no ‘cancer concept album’ – although the music matches the ruminative mood of the lyrics, the overriding emotions are positivity and togetherness. Kenworthy says that a family’s journey together in the face of adversity can be both “brutal” and “beautiful”. The nightfall sound of the Blue Nile is a musical touchpoint, but Love To You, Mate is a very unique creation.