Guh...thank you for articulating this so perfectly! I've been struggling to understand why I could tell some of Collier's music sounds good from a technical perspective, but couldn't understand why those pieces didn't leave me 'feeling' (e.g. moved, touched, in awe, etc). I agree that I hope he is able to incorporate more emotion into his work as he matures.
I am reasonably confident people are going to be dissecting Jacob Collier harmonic choices in the 2100s and beyond, similar to how we dissect John Williams, Charlie Parker, Jaco Pastorius, and other modern composers today.
FWIW, I find the Adam Neely/Sungazer work more listenable, so its not a dislike of covers, but I also don’t enjoy taking the melody out of things just to substitute functional harmonies.
For the average listener, it's not so much that he's "putting the harm in reharmonization", but that he's tastefully (to the western ear) being _specifically_ sharp or flat (depending on the original key - hence 'microtonality') in a way that he is gambling is more appealing to the western ear trained/developed in western music.
Collier will be the same in 50 years.
> people are going to be dissecting Jacob Collier harmonic choices in the 2100s
I hope so! He's nothing short of prodigy.
Technical skill and emotional relatability are entirely based on a relative cultural background. I'm sure there are going to be downvotes from people who really like his music and his whole persona, but this just proves the point that music is an extremely powerful cultural force. You can't keep it in a box.