Spoken-word poetry about Prometheus, screamo rap, sun-dappled acoustic guitar, airy falsetto … and that’s just the first track on Dua Saleh’s Of Earth and Wires, their second album rooted in real-world crises and fictional lore. The Sudanese-American musician (best known for collaborating with Travis Scott and playing Cal in Netflix’s Sex Education) draws on fears of climate collapse and AI dominance, as well as the catastrophic civil war in Sudan, for a post-apocalyptic sequel to the fictional queer romance at the heart of their debut record.
This is a lot of terrain to navigate, but that opening track, 5 Days, tackles it with real guts, twisting from tremulous vocals reminiscent of Perfume Genius into a hot flash of screamed frustration. It promises an exhilarating, bumpy ride – but Of Earth and Wires turns out to be more cautious than its urgent ideas would suggest.
