The follow up to his debut - which won the MTV Africa Music Award for Best Pop & Alternative and named iTunes SA’s Album of the Year - is produced by Will Hicks, with additional production contributions by Jake Gosling.
Critical As Water is led by the single Waves, that has garnered over one million streams since its release. The track quickly ascended Spotify’s Viral Charts in Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland, and made playlists like Spotify’s Weekly Buzz and Left of Centre playlists. Filmmaker Casey Neistat describe it as having an ‘incredible music video’, with its visuals filmed in Mozambique.
The theme of water runs deep through the album. Underwater Blues speaks to the weightlessness of insomnia in a hyper-connected world, while The Shore speaks to social tensions of the times we live in.
More urgent still is the real water crisis in Cape Town, Loops’s hometown. On course to be the first major city in the world to run out of water, taps to homes will be turned off on 12 April 2018, in an environmental crisis that sees the devastating effects of political mismanagement, unsustainable consumption, and rapidly changing climates coming to a heed. These themes come up on songs like Flash Floods and Vultures.
Speaking on the music’s themes, Loops explains: “I grew frustrated trying to force the music because I knew the album was due, but one night after an incredible surf, I got home, picked up my guitar, and wrote Waves. Coincidence or not, I became deliberate about scheduling time in the ocean as a means to writing the album and the songs just kept coming.” He concludes by saying that “it isn’t all doom and gloom. If anything, this is the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever made and it’s warm and lush, but the joyful highs are tempered by the real urgency of the problems the world is facing. Times are always changing. We all have the innate ability to flow like water to adapt to it. I like that about life, and I especially like how that comes across on this album. It feels wonderfully rounded.”
In support of the album release, Loops will be performing a select number of shows in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and the Western Cape in March 2018. The highlight for Gauteng fans is the second season of Large On The Lawn launching with Loops hosting a special concert at Marks Park in Emmarentia on Saturday, 10 March 2018.
Pre-order from smarturl.it/JeremyLoopsCriticalW.
