We kick off this week’s smokin’ six with The Red Clay Strays, who hail from the red-clay dirt of Mobile, Alabama, and have spent the past year trailblazing their musical path across the USA. Their debut album, Moment of Truth, has become a massive word-of-mouth success Stateside, driven by the breakout hit single ‘Wondering Why’. With their incendiary chemistry on stage and eclectic rock’n’roll sound, they’re being hailed as one of the most exciting bands to break through in 2024. The band’s hugely charismatic lead vocalist and guitarist Brandon Coleman – blessed with film-star good looks and the soulful vocals of a gospel confessional – becomes possessed on stage with the power of a Southern fire-and-brimstone preacher. It’s no wonder that he’s capturing hearts and souls wherever the band perform.
‘Do One’, the opening song on Frank Turner’s new album, Undefeated, and its first single, is the song he wrote last of all. So it’s a summation of what he’s trying to say with this record: a record about survival and defiance, but also one with a sense of fun and self-deprecation. Undefeated is Frank’s tenth solo studio album, and it’s fired by feelings of being both fortunate and proud to be in that position, and a new sense of energy and liberation 19 years into his solo career. It feels like a new chapter for him – after the pandemic, back in the independent world, the new line-up of the Sleeping Souls, and a slightly bewildered sense of gratitude that he’s still standing, that he still has something to say.
Funeral for Justice, the new album by Mdou Moctar, was recorded after two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2021’s breakout album Afrique Victime. The new album captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form: the music louder, faster and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down. The songs on Funeral for Justice speak unflinchingly to the plight of Niger and of the Tuareg people. “This album is really different for me,” explains Moctar, the band’s singer, namesake, and indisputably iconic guitarist. “Now the problems of terrorist violence are more serious in Africa. When the US and Europe came here, they said they’re going to help us, but what we see is really different. They never help us to find a solution.”
Kamasi Washington calls Fearless Movement his dance album. “It’s not literal,” he says. “Dance is movement and expression, and in a way it’s the same thing as music – expressing your spirit through your body. That’s what this album is pushing.” This signals a shift in focus for Washington: where previous albums dealt with cosmic ideas and existential concepts, Fearless Movement focuses in on the everyday, an exploration of life on earth. This change in scope is due in large part to the birth of Washington’s first child a few years ago. The album features Washington’s daughter – who wrote the melody to ‘Asha the First’ during some of her first experimentations on the piano – as well as a host of collaborators new and old: André 3000 appears on flute and George Clinton lends his voice, as do BJ The Chicago Kid, Inglewood rapper D-Smoke and Taj and Ras Austin of Coast Contra, the twin sons of West Coast legend Ras Kass. Washington further enlisted lifelong friends and collaborators Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Patrice Quinn, Brandon Coleman, DJ Battlecat and more.
Hailing from a place of ancient mariners’ secret coves and vast moors beaten by the wind and rain, Backwater Collage is the first solo album from James Hoare (Veronica Falls, The Proper Ornaments and Ultimate Painting) under the name of Penny Arcade. Having left London to return to the west country he grew up in, he is no stranger to the scene; he has been wandering around as if awakened from a long, not-so-peaceful sleep for some time now. The eleven intimate and solitary songs which make up this dreamy, hand-stitched album – delivered in the greatest home recording tradition – are, nonetheless. cautiously produced. James unfurls pure, uncluttered melodies in which his gentle, melancholic voice mingles with smooth, warm vocals by Nathalia Bruno. Barely saturated guitar solos sometimes disrupt the clear, unpolished musical line. Hopping on board, long-time friend Max Claps adds keyboard parts that manage to embrace the minimal nostalgia of the tracks while preventing any teary pathos. Similar to Jack Name or Syd Barrett – only less psychedelic – in terms of songwriting and stripped-back atmosphere, Hoare is sitting on the Velvet Underground’s black-and-white sofa and gives his album a subterranean feel. At times restless but light-footed, deprived of any unnecessary effects, the record follows in the steps of a less noisy but just as raw and unadorned Jesus and Mary Chain.
Our release of the week is Fragile as Humans – written and recorded as Emily Barker’s time living in the UK was coming to a close – on which she turns her lyrical gaze inwards. The expansive themes of her previous album, A Dark Murmuration of Words, are replaced by an empathetic concern for matters more personal, familial, closer to home. The ten songs take us on a deep dive into the human condition: an unflinching self-examination of grief, pain, loneliness and loss, at the same time sparkling with hope and optimism. As Emily writes in the album’s pivotal title track, we live lives of complexity, grappling with loneliness and disconnection, searching for compassion, connection and community – we are all “fragile as humans and made of who we love”.
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