Album Review: Offering by Ibeyi
By handing it to a crew of producers with songs of Yoruba invocation and heartbreak, the sisters’ blended voices are the through-line that survives the new electronics.
Four years came and went between Spell 31 and this release, and most of that time was spent jettisoning themselves from a major label and aiming their sights back at Cuba. It’s where the twin sisters, Naomi Díaz and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz—collectively Ibeyi—shot the album’s new material, in the city where their father found employment as a percussionist. It was reframed as a homecoming of sorts, a trip to find themselves again, but perhaps the most striking departure is the one you’ll encounter long before the opening vocals. On the new project, Ibeyi handed the control of the narrative and the beats to a team of producers they’ve never worked with. The two instrumental focal points that anchored everything they had ever created prior—Díaz’s drum kit and her sister’s piano—are gone. Their absence removes the last thing standing between the listener and two perfectly blended voices.
The project opens with “Olokun,” a stark, devotional plea set at the base of an oceanic abyss, in which a group of voices chants the refrain, “Sawa te late o lokú,” calling out to the water’s iricha; an all-consuming bottom that’s felt somewhere beneath the chest, the middle section dense, the escape into nothing left abruptly bare. As the tempo rises, on “Moshpit,” the electronics are gnashing: heavy distortion drags on either sister’s layered harmonies as they assert, “I’m a god, then I’m nothing/I’m a void, incompleted,” atop a thick rhythm that stutters rather than bobs. Haitian producer Michaël Brun’s expertise on “Aset” anchors down the heavy rhythm and steady bodies within the mix when things get especially synth-driven, while many of their collaborators streamline each song toward a sound familiar from many modern pop and electronic R&B artists, only the sisters’ voices pulling it back.
Two cosmologies coexist across these invocations, distinct lines drawn by how the lyrics position them; the Lucumí energy, “Olokun,” is honored as “the spirit of the ocean” on the title track, whilst Elegguá, the road opener, is addressed in lament on “Baba” with a chorus of “AH Elegguá Baba Elegguá.” As “Baba”’s refrain repeats and morphs into the declaration of “I won’t listen anymore/Trust them anymore,” the music finds clarity of voice with “I’m who I was looking for,” a kind of answered prayer. On “Aset,” Ibeyi look to Egypt, and the sisters narrate an Egyptian myth that begins with “I am Osiris Rising/I kept stealing their knowledge/Now I know divination/As I throw all the shells in,” weaving a tale of rebirth and resurrection by means of shell divination, leading to a powerful resolution in Spanish: “Esto es amor eterno.” Here, the devotion to a deity and a lover converge—the rite allows for more tenderness between breakup narratives than either is accustomed to delivering.
The lyrics spill out line by line on “Offerings.” Where their early works built intricate sonic narratives within coded language, here they “don’t make spells anymore/Now I make offerings,” giving away every piece of themselves, “I guess my heart is an offering,” the gift presented to the same person that fractured it. The terror of the unknown is spoken with bracing honesty on “Fear of change/I’m scared of living, Can you replace this heartbeat that no longer beats?” The wound is ultimately reconciled to one expressed plainly in the album’s final line: “I lived, I broke my heart/I gave it to the gods, baby.”
The collection’s two love songs, sung alternately in French, English, and Spanish, arrive with disparate emotional tonalities. The French and Frenchie of “La tendresse d’un mot,” featuring Sofiane Pamart on piano, express a quiet commitment to being “Si tu changes, je resterai la même,” remaining unchanged while a partner does, the refrain returning to “N’oublie jamais que je reste.” Fame strains this resolve, addressed as “Loin des lights du star système” (“far from the star system’s lights”) as the partners share their struggles.
“Good Life” shifts into Spanish and turns to thanks and gratitude; its bass pulls away so that the sisters’ voices are almost the only thing you can hear as they reflect in Spanish, “Cuando una lagrima me sube/Agradesco todo lo que tuve,” meaning “When a tear rises/I am grateful for all I had,” finding beauty in what was given as, “Encontrar en lo triste algo dulce” (“finding something sweet in what’s sad”).
The moment the refrain’s harmonies build up from line-for-line responses to one another is when it’s at its most crystalline and ethereal. “The Process” delves into the darker aspects of the album’s Spanish-language lyrics, a scene described like the clashing of blades over cut-open hearts: “Corto los corazones/Pico el acero/Machete en el cielo.” The violence resolves into a determined commitment, “I won’t numb the process.”
Trust erodes on “I Know You Loved Me” as “I’m running out of faith trying to hold what fragments my heart” becomes the refrain of faith dissolving, love becoming a reduced “This is just the river, this is not the sea.” The casual dismissal of hurt as just a matter of bad treatment, “You were the first to hurt me bad and call it love,” is stated frankly, and the song remains embedded in low-end hurt, not moving beyond it. “Hurry Hurry,” in contrast, moves to reconcile: They declare, “I’m more in love with you than then,” leading into a bridge alluding to the ultimate aspiration, “Make me your wife/Love in my eyes/I’ll make you smile/Immortalize/So that our love will never die.” Unlike its surrounding pieces, the lyrics on “Hurry HURRY” are plain, a straightforward plea rendered with undeniable intent as it collapses Ibeyi’s multi-lingual, experimental landscape to a solitary, insistent longing.
Underlying these electronic textures is the oldest sound in the record, a sonic touchstone of two sisters speaking into a singular line—as found in the “Olokun” chant, two voices so intertwined they can scarcely be differentiated, from the “Sawa te late o lok” that kickstarts the album to “I was lucky” that brings it to a quiet halt. Producers come and go, but this is the core of Ibeyi’s DNA. As the music locks into an Elegguá call on “Baba,” its bottom is deep and sure, and those two joined voices form the one instrument that they’ve never surrendered.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Aset,” “Offerings,” “Good Life”