Multi-talented artist talks her shit.
Laetitia Tamko is a self-taught musician and producer from Yaoundé, Cameroon. At age 13, she moved to New York City with her family and began sharing original music on the internet under the name Vagabon. This name stuck ever since. Tamko turned the heads of American audiences and music reviewers with her 2017 debut studio album Infinite Worlds. With Tamko on vocals, guitar, drums, keyboard and synth, this album showcases her multi-instrumental abilities.
In 2019, Tamko released a self-produced album through Nonesuch Records. It was an intimate new wave, art-pop exploration of sound. This September, Tamko released a third studio album, the second with Nonesuch Records, Sorry I Haven’t Called.
The album opens with two pre-released singles, “Can I Talk My Shit?” then “Carpenter.” Both are self-reflective and conversational. In “Can I Talk My Shit?” Tamko asks questions like “Can I be honest?,” “Why’re you scared?” and “I know what you like, it’s impressive right?.” Tamko’s voice sits in a whimsical falsetto as she slips into a catharsis of emotion. Keeping the introspective lyrical tone, “Carpenter” segues into an Afro-pop beat. “I wasn’t ready to hear you out / I wasn’t ready to shut it down / I wasn’t ready to talk it out / I wasn’t ready to be let down,” but Tamko is “All ready now.”
Track three “You Know How” is a soft-synth house track. It transitions into track four “Lexicon,” which is another pre-released single. It is bubbly and playful – featuring live guitar, bass and drums. Tamko’s lexicon, “Is gone / When we dance all night.” She is apprehensive about being honest with someone and instead, she says nothing.
In track five “Passing Me By,” Tamko finds herself “taking different paths” than someone she was once close with. “In a street where we all used to be,” Tamko reminisces over people and places that remind her of that past relationship. The album slows down into a dreamy, vocal-focused hymn that feels like a Frank Ocean song. This track, titled “Autobahn,” has a synth organ that is levitating and sincere. The lyrics, “The car’s still on, I will go where it serves me,” suggest a meaning for the track title. Germany, the birthplace of Sorry I Haven’t Called, is known for having a “federal motorway” or autobahn, short for Bundesautobahn. “You came out all this way to see me.”
“Do Your Worst” and “Made Out with Your Best Friend” are sassy and bold. The “Frequency [is] so low when you are present,” but the frequencies of these songs are high and trilling. In “Do Your Worst,” an unknown “you” turns Tamko “Into someone I don’t like / Into someone I don’t fuck with.” In turn, she makes out with their best friend “And he loved it.”
Track 12 “Anti-Fuck” concludes Sorry I Haven’t Called with mellow rock. Tamko engages in an ongoing reflective process by posing more questions at the end of the album. “Am I wrong to decide? / Am I wrong to reply?” The very last line threads listeners into her unresolved string of thought, “And you call me when you – .”
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