In recent years with his Spasm band the poet-singer Anthony Joseph has become a festival draw particularly on the continent, his approach as infectious as it is literary. Here he is in different company featuring with the vowel-less Brzzvll who have collectively produced the album recording it in Belgium, a band he first got to know in Antwerp three years ago.
The liner notes feature Joseph’s poetry, the contours and dynamics of the music rising like the passion of a sage-like street preacher behind the mesmerising words. There is a real magnetism to opener ‘Engines’, a throbbing pulse from the bass, and this appetiser is followed by ‘Liquor Store’ the narrative progression through a tale of being driven around in Chicago the protagonist observing the way contrasting activities and institutions exist side by side, the church next to the liquor shop, I bet the hair salon is next to the undertaker. Joseph becomes even more Gil Scott-Heron-like on a track like this, the irony and mischief in his delivery, if not quite the scalding bite at least here, striking. Joseph connects Trinidad with Europe in the song, and it is his great ability to join the dots between cultures from around the world that beams out of this record, the damage done by history not forgotten or trivialised for the sake of entertainment.
The band is very alert, the vibe perfect for a festival tent or larger club where jazz fans meet people who like to dance and hang out. The banjo-led ‘Interludium 1’ doesn’t really add much though, a little distracting before the next song ‘Liverpool Highlands’ (above) which is much more solemn, the link between the slave trade and sugar, England and the Caribbean, explored evocatively: the resonance of water was damp and heavy in the air, as Joseph’s lyrics state it, the sarod-like guitar rippling up from the band on a steady stream behind his voice.
On the streets-of-Harlem-inspired ‘Combustible and Frozen’ Joseph eventually sails on top of a Danny Bowens-like groove, the band really roused and responsive, and you’ll struggle to find a more poetic yet dance-friendly album at the moment with such strong jazz content folded in. The serious issues-derived side of this fine album is there in quantity as well, ‘Root Strata’ with its meditations on mud and dissonance enough to stop you dead in your tracks and really make you think long and hard.
Stephen Graham
The UK/Ireland release is 30 March
And you can also listen to Anthony Joseph’s recent BBC documentary programme about calypsonian Lord Kitchener here