DREAMS ON THE PASSENGER SEAT — DAMEDAME*

The bulk of Jorja Smith's Falling or Flying was written and produced by two women from Walsall, which is also where Smith is from, and for three years that was most of the public record on Barbara Boko and Edith Nelson. DREAMS ON THE PASSENGER SEAT changes it. Ten songs, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds, out July 24 on Robots & Humans through Sony UK, and it is the rare producer-to-artist move that does not sound like a demo reel. The instrumentation is played rather than stacked: strings carrying an actual arrangement, basslines that sit off the beat and stay there, transatlantic soul read through UK jazz instead of borrowed wholesale from Atlanta. They debuted as an act in 2023 with 'A STRANGER,' which EA picked up for FC24, and have since produced for Calvin Harris, Tems, Wizkid and Jim Legxacy. The subject matter stays domestic. Somebody cooks for you. Somebody refuses to answer the question. The sadness that never makes it to the story. The gap is that they have been among the most consequential people in British soul for three years and this is the first record with their name at the top of it.