My Jacob Collier Problem

It might be him. It could be me. Maybe it's you, too.

Jacob Collier on the Djesse World Tour, making even a messianic pose feel friendly.

There’s a simple, seductive bridge in one of Dua Lipa’s new songs, which rides a precisely calibrated disco groove. “But if control is my religion, then I’m heading for collision, lost my 20/20 vision, please,” our girl sings coolly, over a modulation to the vi chord. (If my cocktail-napkin music theory holds, the song, “Whatcha Doing,” is in F minor, which makes that submediant a Db major.) It’s one of many small but crucial decisions that went into Dua Lipa’s third album, which she titled Radical Optimism.

Hazel Cills and I discuss that album on a New Music Friday episode of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered podcast, out today. (Among the other standout releases on our agenda: Here in the Pitch, by singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt, and Fearless Movement, by saxophonist Kamasi Washington. More on Kamasi soon.)

Of course I’m not really here to talk about Dua Lipa, except in this bait-and-switch fashion. My real subject is Jacob Collier, whose Djesse World Tour touched down this week at The Met Philadelphia. I caught the show Monday night, because after years of holding Collier at a respectful arm’s length, I thought it was time for my baptism. I guess what I really wanted out of the show was something more like a conversion.

Collier, in case his name doesn’t ring a bell, is an impish singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist from North London who has carved out a strange and special place in music. He emerged about a decade ago as a musical virologist on YouTube; there’s a decent chance you’ve seen some of his split-screen / stacked-harmony shenanigans there. “In fact,” as I noted in this definition of viral jazz, “it wouldn’t be a stretch to argue that YouTube is his genre.”

By this point, though, it’s clear that Collier has outgrown his original 16:9 aspect ratio, becoming an irl pied piper of postmillennial pseudo-pop. He has six Grammy awards, twice as many nominations, and the enthusiastic co-sign of legit masters like Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones. He’s an expert collaborator, an effortless catalyst, and a magically adept conductor of arena sing-alongs. He’s the sort of guy who could craft that Dua Lipa bridge upside-down, with one hand tied behind his back. He is 29, and at a glance he could pass for 15. Vocally, he sounds like Paul McCartney at 50.

On the merits, Jacob Collier should be one of my least problematic faves. He has an incredible knack for streamlining musical complexities so that they feel natural. He’s cultivated a robust, rainbow-coalition fan base that flips out over the inside game: an elegant modulation, a left-field chord voicing. His “Audience Choir,” which is so much of a trademark that it has an official plug-in from Native Instruments, comes out of a stated conviction that everyone has a voice worth hearing. Like so many of the artists I hold in high esteem, he combines rare technical command with a willful push toward surrender — or, to put it in the pithier terms of the celebrated Anglo-Balkan philosopher Dua Lipa: Control is his religion, and he’s heading for collision. (Please!)

What, then, were the key takeaways from my immersion in the Djesse World Tour? I do have Some Thoughts, which paid subscribers will find below. If you aren’t ready to make that commitment, I get it. As a gesture of goodwill, I’ll even leave you with something beautiful — an impromptu solo cover of Björk’s eternal “Hyperballad,” which Collier performed at the end of a day of taping in East London last fall.

I did say “beautiful,” and I mean it. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I’m told, and this beholder also has a bit of side-eye for Jacob Collier. Shall we?