Rosie Lowe - Yu - New 2019 LP on Red Vinyl UK Pressing - Rock / Pop

On debut album Control she was striding out alone, tackling politics, feminism and modern relationships. But if Control was about self, YU – says Rosie – “is about other. I wanted to write about my experience of sharing my life with another as a lover, friend and partner.” These are intensely songs of the mind, which makes sense after all when you consider the fact that Lowe is also training in psychotherapy. And it’s a process of analysis which allows YU the broader scope to interrogate life as a twenty something in London, as a woman empowered and in control. As much as it pushes into new sounds and stories, YU also sees Rosie Lowe look back on her life, and all those things that make YU. She grew up as one of six kids in rural Devon, having learnt the saxophone young (which she still plays and adores) and been exposed to a broad mix of soul, jazz, funk and R&B; influences which come to glorious fruition on her second album, where inspiration ranges from Childish Gambino, Gabrielle Garzon Montano and Thundercat to childhood heroes like Ella Fitzgerald or Charlie Parker. Lowe realised early on, too, that love was a fragile, difficult thing, her parents splitting up resulting in weekends spent living out of a bag.

One listen to YU and the strength achieved when you broaden these horizons becomes immediately apparent – which for Lowe, in part involved allowing others in more. The record features a rare appearance from Jay Electronica, The P Funk Choir, and leading lights across the UK’s dance and jazz circles (Floating Points, Shabaka Hutchings, Alfa Mist). Despite its richly classic feel, what’s emerged on YU is an album on thoroughly modern, twenty-first-century love: its childhood myths and more pragmatic realities, its utopias and difficult weathers. Those moments when you find out how you are, who you are, and if you’re brave enough, you let it all bleed through. On her stunning second album, YU, Rosie Lowe has also done just that.