New Era Frequency

Best known as the dynamic frontwoman for Australian roots band Blue King Brown, Nattali Rize (aka Natalie Pa’apa’a) has recently created a couple of side projects featuring Jamaican musicians. She's spent considerable time in the Caribbean nation in the last few years with her partner, the musician Carlo Santone, so it's no surprise that this album features original songs along with three dub versions, highlighting the talents of drum’n’bass duo Notis (Wayne ‘Unga Barunga’ Thompson and Jason ‘WelshBass’ Welsh).

Making the pop-roots-reggae format her own, Rize comfortably cruises through such new repertoire, with the help of guest Kingston toasters Kabaka Pyramid (Keron Salmon) on ‘Generations Will Rize’ and Zuggu Dan on ‘Rebel Love’. As a rasta rhythm section, Thompson (who also produces here) and Welsh are as solid as you’d expect, and Rize's ‘positive vibration’ vocals are well suited to the genre.

But in exhorting listeners to ‘rise up’ and ‘set yourself free,’ among other several other natty-dread clichés, in a faux-Jamaican patois, it can grow tiresome at times. As with her ongoing work with Blue King Brown, Rize's political activism is to be applauded, but occasionally it can actually get in the way of the music.