Review: Nevaland by Alem Worldwide
At a time when much of the world is stuck in their homes avoiding a pandemic which has ravaged countless countries and tanked the global economy, Alem Worldwide wants you to leave your house. Well….maybe not literally. To be more specific, 23 year old Shara Ali, better known as Alem Worldwide, released her newest single, “Nevaland” on April 3 and I strongly advise that you listen to it to mentally escape our current conditions.
Ali’s “Nevaland” mirrors J. M. Barrie’s imagined world from the classic novel Peter Pan in name only. Here, you will not find pirates with hooks for hands or ticking clocks lodged in crocodile bellies. Instead, Ali offers a sensual and curious landscape to get lost in.
Produced by Matthew Marvin, slinky guitars and skittering hi-hats provide the ethereal foundation for Ali’s ruminations on the physical body and sex. In the chorus she wonders, “What’s it all about when we / in, out, in, out?” This, however, is not simply a song about sex -- we have lots of those. Instead, her inquiry suggests a true exploration and curiosity about the link between our tangible, physical bodies and the cognitive experience of pleasure from sex: the trip to “Nevaland.”
Overall, Ali crushes it. Her voice is exponentially and naturally more powerful than many of your Spotify Pollen playlist favorites, with her layered vocals providing the entire harmonic structure at certain points in the song. Her performance, and the subject matter of the song, serve as perfect remedies for a time during which we so badly need refuge from the realities of the world. One listen will have you believing that “Nevaland,” and the curious beings in all of us, are not so distant after all.