A landmark of powerful storytelling and songwriting in this fourth album by the Leeds-born singer with songs inspired by immersion into a rich collection of art, books and artefacts about Black history organised by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. Expanding to a range of different genres such as post-punk, psychedelia, jazz and rock as well as her more familiar soul and pop, this is very much an long evolution far way beyond the sunnier, more innocent sound her breakthrough 2007 huge hit Put Your Records On. The strength of this release is also very stories of ex-slaves and other elements of Black history, some of which inspired her time at Stony Island where she also recorded some of the material. The beautiful, moving Peach Velvet Sky for example aims to capture to experience and fortitude of escaped slave Harriet Jacobs who hides in her grandmother’s loft for seven years. The visceral rage of Erasure recalling many chilling stories of slavery and other forms of negrophobia. More positive though, punchy New York Transit Queen. inspired by the life and career in the 1940s and 50s Harlem model and artist Audrey Smaltz (see also her in interview below) from striking, sexy photograph when she was 17. From objects such as reclaimed police station floorboards that must have witnessed many dark secret events, to thousands of books, this is a rich, expansive work that despite the subject matter has an underlying optimistic tone of defiance and hope, from opener, A Spell, A Power, the wonderfully experimental jazz title track, all the way to the closing elevations of Before The Throne of The Invisible God. Mind-expanding and profound. Out on Black Rainbows Music / Thirty Tigers.
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