The Invisible - Rispah

Rispah, the second album by The Invisible, has been billed by the band’s lead singer Dave Okumu as “a love letter to grief” – it was written and recorded following the death of his mother, and she gives the album its title. Okumu has recalled how he struggled to engage with music in the time after his bereavement until his grandmother and a group of women sang traditional spirituals over his mother’s body: “They were celebrating life and death, grief and hope, all things… It served as the most potent reminder of everything I believe about music. It's there for everybody, it's inclusive and transformative”. These voices are woven into the music on Rispah, like hopeful spectres hovering within Okumu’s own meditations on grief.

Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances surrounding the album’s recording, Rispah is a sonically dark listen – there are moments when light, or something, breaks through, with a chiming melodic guitar line or a sudden, cathartic release, but for the most part the album deals in the flat shades of grey of grief. Okumu’s vocals are understated and patient, double tracked and allowed to overlap so that he forms a quietly dejected or determined chorus with himself. Around him, his bandmates Tom Herbert and Leo Taylor fill out his songs, creating thick atmospheres not unlike those found on modern classical recordings or, with their layers of polyrhythms that formed a much more care-free groove on their debut album, seemingly supporting Okumu and driving him forward.

In Rispah’s best moments, The Invisible pull off the difficult feat of combining fairly linear songwriting with more experimental electronic elements. You’re likely to hear Radiohead comparisons in Rispah’s reviews and certainly on tracks like ‘Wings’ the similarity is uncanny, if only for the way the trio balance acoustic and electronic elements as carefully as the Oxford band did on In Rainbows. Elsewhere, however, the band find their own unique niche with a meditative, seamless combination of elements of jazz, electronica, ambience and ‘rock’ (in the loosest possible sense). ‘Generational’, built into a bass-heavy climax around Okumu’s hymn-like vocals, is one example, while the stunning ‘Protection’ expands into a grand reflection on death and celebration of life simultaneously, breaking around Okumu’s processed guitar before coming together again.

Okumu’s lyrics are also an understated strength here – instead of drawing out more personal specifics, he paints much broader, universal pictures with his words, and this actually has a more powerful effect. While this can get dark – ‘Lifeline’ broods on a tired, detached kind of despair drowned in ghostly echoes – it also allows for moments of acceptance and hope. On ‘What Happened’ he sings of a lack of fear and building “a temple to your spirit” in the face of grief, while ‘Surrender’ toes a line ambiguously, subtly, realistically between the two extremes.

In the run up to the release of Rispah, Dave Okumu suffered a life-threatening electric shock on stage during a performance. Thankfully, he’s on the road to recovery and the songs from Rispah, when the band can eventually return to playing them live, will stand as forceful testaments to their recent struggles as a trio, as well as Okumu's own personal grief. For now, Rispah is an immersive, tender, deeply human album as you’re likely to hear all year.