Being more honest with the world and my community about who I am and letting go of some heavy heavy shame, which is a glorious thing.

At the end of the impassioned chorus of first single ‘More Pressure’ Kae asks the listener to ‘Let Me Let Go’, and it really does seem that they have let go here – they feel less constricted, freer. In interviews, Tempest has described The Line Is A Curve as a more personal record and that is manifested visually from the outset, with their face adorning the album’s artwork. Starting from a place of isolation and dejection, Tempest ends with community-facing lightness and love. The tension between the self and the collective is central to their work; so is narrative’s role in bridging those two realms.Next to these, there are album highlights such as ‘More Pressure’ (with Kevin Abstract) and ‘Nothing To Prove’ that are the most pure Hip-Hop songs on any of Kae’s four albums so far, no longer blurring the lines between rap and spoken word. That’s what allows the voices to take centre stage and when it comes to Tempest’s work, the words really matter. Those moments when we are caught off guard; the occasions when the contrast between the music and voice is most stark. The album plays like a chronicle of pressures - the mind-numbing pursuit of a comfortable life, the eternal striving for more, the pressures of the city, the country, the times. It features guest spots from Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, Confucius MC, assia and Kevin Abstract.

It’s a fascinating listen as a languid synth provides a compelling counterpoint to Tempest’s visceral rap. Elsewhere, on “Priority Boredom,” where each verse is dedicated to its own vowel sound, the monotony of individualism is cleverly represented with congested “or” sounds: “Priority boredom/Gorging/Four courses/Forced absorption,” they spit, the words like slushy fruit in their mouth. On every album they release there is at least one song that towers above everything else and makes itself the centrepiece and this time it is the hypnotic, mesmerising, and beautiful ‘Salt Coast. Again, it’s a guitar-led piece, albeit this time it’s an acoustic guitar, delicately plucked, that provides the platform for Tempest’s lyrics. As the album progresses, Carey’s instrumentation becomes wider and lighter, and Tempest’s lyrics become more optimistic—“More grounded/More rooted/Less convoluted,” they rap on “More Pressure” over Carey’s euphoric, oscillating synth.But once we get to the end of Grace, and the album, we loop back to the start – to ‘Kiss off the day with a mute mouth. Stripped back, with acoustic piano and melancholic strings, it showed the world that here was an artist with more than one string to their bow. Lianne La Havas proves to be an outstanding collaborator on No Prizes, her smouldering and soulful vocal perfectly contrasting with Tempest’s spoken word.