The Canadian-born, Ireland-based artist Ndidi O pulls us by the collar into a staggering emotional space on her new album, “It’s About Time”. You might recognize her commanding vocals drifting through high-stakes television moments on Netflix or HBO Max, but here, she strips away the glossy screen to sit right beside you. This is her most intensely personal and politically fierce work to date a masterclass woven from blues, soul, and Irish traditional music that demands absolute attention.
She confronts the sheer, unglamorous weight of physical change and existential grief with startling directness. On “Young One,” a rustic, stripped-down Americana track, we navigate the melancholic mourning of a past self. Ndidi articulates the specific, heavy emotional shifts of perimenopause and aging not as a simple fact of life, but as a profound, sorrowful shedding of past identities. That internal reckoning bleeds beautifully into the sweeping isolation of “Wanderer,” where a quiet rhythm steadily climbs into a lush crescendo of pure, lonely exhaustion.
Yet the record fiercely widens its lens, translating intimate pain into grand, systemic defiance against a modern era tilting toward fascism. “Farewell My Green Valleys” plucks a rolling, repetitive melody that mirrors unforgiving ocean waves, capturing the heavy, tragic determination of displaced people fleeing a dying homeland. That grim voyage is matched by the bluesy, cyclical stomp of “Down This Road,” charting a gritty, rebellious momentum against systemic exploitation. The tension finally breaks open in “Old Crone.” What starts as brooding marginalization detonates into a defiant, cinematic rock triumph, capturing a deeply thrilling collective awakening.
She maneuvers through treacherous personal dynamics just as effectively. The hypnotic, cascading arpeggios of “Little Mouse” weave an eerie, unsettling trap, detailing the quiet horror of a predatory relationship with sickening accuracy. But Ndidi doesn’t leave us entirely in the cold; she counters this dark folk tension with the warm, anthemic folk-pop of “Come On Home,” acting as an unwavering sanctuary for the weary.
We are shown exactly how our struggles with our shifting bodies, our broken societies, and our lingering ghosts are all inextricably bound. By the time we wade into the ethereal, drone-like atmosphere of “She Moved Through The Fair,” mourning a supernatural romance cut down too soon, the absolute gravity of her storytelling settles heavily in the chest. When the inevitable exhaustion finally takes over and our youth entirely fades, whose hands will we actually reach out for to help us navigate the dark?
