“Peace I Can’t Wake To” is most persuasive when JOHKES interrupts his own solemnity. Writing from the aftermath of a 2023 road accident and coma, the Lincoln-based rapper moves across fourteen tracks through family grief, guilt, forgiveness, flirtation and absurdity. His present life as a wheelchair user forms the album’s factual centre, while the music keeps testing how many reactions can gather around that centre before the story begins to sprawl.

The soft R&B of “All In My Head” and the family sentiment of “Im Still Your Brother” establish a measured emotional language, then “Forget You” changes the album’s body language completely. Its sensual dance energy cuts across the earlier reflection. The change registered as a detour on my first listen; by the second, its impatience made the surrounding tenderness sound more spontaneous. Recovery here has appetite, vanity and bad timing alongside pain.

Recovery, Grief, Humour

-PurpleMistress

“My Squirrel, My Koala Bear” arrives carrying the title of either a love song or a text sent after three drinks. Its strangeness survives the name and becomes a useful test of the album’s nerve. JOHKES folds dark humour into his speaking voice; the jokes sit inside the damage. Across fourteen songs, this freedom sometimes loosens the pacing. The sequence can appear eager to prove that every emotional shade belongs, and a tighter middle stretch would sharpen the advance toward the closing title track.

The gospel colouring of “Take My Hand” pulls private survival toward collective language. From there, the epic scale of “Peace I Can’t Wake To” suits the grim idea embedded in the title: unconsciousness offered peace, while waking restored obligation, memory and a life demanding participation. Scheduled for September 24, the album earns its larger finale through the smaller, stranger details placed earlier. Even during the final rise, “Peace I Can’t Wake To” still occupies a corner of the record, grinning at the solemnity. JOHKES leaves it there. Good decision.