Tika shares hard cold truth about love in debut album

Tika shares hard cold truth about love in debut album

Paul F. Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta

"Under their feet lies the lung / from where I breathe / under
their feet lies the tongue / from where I speak / under their
feet lie the crumbs from where I eat / under their feet lies the
heart/ hear my heart beat"

This is the opening verse of Under Their Feet, track two of
Frozen Love Songs the debut album of Tika, a local singer-
songwriter. And yes, you can truly hear her heart beat in this
album.

Verse after verse and track after track, Kartika Jahja, or
Tika as she is known, consistently pours raw honesty into her
words. With Frozen Love Songs, Tika manages to take us deep into
her perceptions of love and all the demons and angels that come
with it.

The sincerity and dark beauty of her lyrics are not the only
things that make her music so powerful. This woman can sing. To
use a simile, her voice is like honey; it is thick, smooth, slow,
and sweet. This trait is most apparent in track three Waiting for
2:00.

Not only does she know how to use her powerful voice, she is
also able to masterfully contort it to suit the specifics of an
emotion. This is obvious in the aforementioned "Under Their
Feet", in which her vocals initially refer to Sade and eventually
float into Billie Holiday, touching a bit on Beth Gibbons here
and there, and then launching into a heart-wrenching screaming
fit.

The words and the voice are accompanied by mood-appropriate
music composed by Tika in collaboration with Aghi Narottama,
Bemby Gusti, Iman Fattah and Age.

Comparable to Portishead-like trip-hop on the surface, the
album proves to be much more upon further listening. Elements of
smoky backroom-jazz can be felt strongly throughout this
offering, thus further underlining the strength of Tika's honey-
like voice and enhancing the emotional power of her words. This
characteristic is most apparent in the Nina Simone-esque "My Late
Ego".

Among the beat-laden tracks lie Saddest Farewell, a standout
solo piano piece that perfectly captures the contradictory mix of
comfort and sadness in being alone. In it Tika sings "My Shadows
love me / just like I love myself / but I don't love my shadows/
the way they love me/ let me die in peace/ they follow me to my
bed/ they follow me to my sleep/ they follow me to my grave/ my
shadows love me."

This album takes you through the plethora of emotions that
accompany love -- whether sweet, bitter or just plain painful.
Its nine tracks will leave you wishing that it lasted longer, and
hoping that Tika will go to work on another album soon and
further establish her own true musical identity, which she is
clearly shaping in this debut album.

Album Info:

Title: Frozen Love Songs

Artist: Tika

Label: ROOFTOPSOUND / Aksara Records

Standout Tracks: Under Their Feet; Fever Fairytale; My Late Ego;

Rimbaud's Limbo; Saddest Farewell.

Rating: **** out of ***** (4 out of 5)