Tag Archives: Leyla McCalla

Fresh Juice

29th April 2024

Leyla McCalla – Scaled To Survive

Leyla has, during the past ten years of solo releases after raising her profile as part of Carolina Chocolate Drops, released some essential albums often thematically linked, be it a tribute to the writer Langston Hughes or a deep dive into the history of Haiti’s first Kreyol-language radio station. However, for her incredible new album ‘Sun Without The Heat’ she has parked the conceptual approach and made space for her more personal singer-songwriter instincts to find a path. And because this multi-instrumentalist, who in a past life would busk Bach on a cello, is so kaleidoscopic in her natural range the resulting album is a pure delight, including this gently lilting song about motherhood…

La Luz – Strange World

Ahead of the release of new album ‘News Of The Universe’ La Luz tease this, a track that suggests the often used “always the same but always different” phrase could easily apply. Some changes are obvious for whilst Shana Cleveland remains at the core this is clearly a different line-up to the last configuration of La Luzers heard on 2021’s brilliant self titled album. Other evolutions are hazier for while that distinct surf-noir sound remains this is definitely a band looking to a more electro-friendly future; albeit a future rooted in the past as it tries to imagine the coming decades through the lens of a 1970s disco flavoured starship trooper…

The Losin’ Streaks – The Slink

This bands 2024 album ‘Last House’ is the record I have heard this year that most authentically captures that scuzzy garage band sound I love so much. If you check out the record I’d suggest going for ‘Last House On The Block’ as the must-hear modern day nugget but as I could not find a video of that online I offer instead this recent live film which deceptively weaves in sixties crowd footage but belongs very much in the hear and now…

AC Sapphire – Weed Money

From the ‘Dec 32nd’ album that I have already predicted on klofmag.com will be one of this years new releases that enjoys a shelf life way beyond 2024. It is a songwriters album that is wonderfully diverse, being neither Americana, folk, desert haze or indie pop even though it has echoes of all and much more besides. ‘Weed Money’ is one of the albums more straight-ahead acoustic troubadour numbers but be sure to go to the long player for the full cosmic road-trip experience…

Pokey LaFarge – One You One Me

Always a delight to report that Pokey has new old-time music on the way. He is a performer who cannot help but put a smile on the face of an audience and so even when he offers up a video of grainy loved-up footage from his wedding day, rather than reach for the sick bag you feel the joy too. After being in the same room as him last year and grinning like an idiot for ninety minutes, I don’t think I’ll ever try and resist the charming sounds of Pokey, now with added rhumba…

Parsnip – Turn To Love

There simply aren’t enough Australian and yet curiously Welsh sounding bands prepared to wear am-dram headwear, pull Wicker Man dance moves and detonate their song with one harmoniously trippy blast in the middle before returning to the church organ hymn-like mantra of the opening never to hit full bloom again. I mean a chorus this grand and lush deserves more than one serving so the only thing to do is go back to the start and bathe in the whole thing all over again…

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2022

Leyla McCalla – Breaking The Thermometer

One of the outstanding releases of the year and one that is truly like no other, a song cycle that looks at a subject matter in depth and weaves a whole records worth of material around that theme. Every song here belongs specifically to this project, one that began after Leyla McCalla was given a composition commission from Duke University in North Carolina. The focus of the new work was to be Radio Haiti, a broadcaster from the Caribbean country with a reputation for uncovering political corruption whose journalists had been repaid with persecutory, torturous, sometimes fatal retaliations or expulsion. Leyla’s approach to this was not to document incidents in a dry chronological manner, instead this piece fizzes with life because she uses the seed of the idea as a blank canvas on which to take a deep dive into Haitian music culture in a quest for deeper understanding.

Part of this immersion is the vocals, which she primarily sings in Haitian Creole, the French based dialect of the country’s natives. It is also in the ambience of the sound, Leyla has made her mark previously as a superb purveyor of traditional sounding American folk with old time blues roots poking through that lend her work a surefire emotional punch, but on ‘Breaking The Thermometer’ there are also underlying textures of sunshine and Tropicalia as enticing African and Spanish rhythms rise and fade throughout. McCalla brings personal memory to the table too, especially in a stunning cover of ‘You Don’t Know Me’ by formerly exiled Brazilian songwriter Caetano Veloso, someone whose music she recalled from childhood and maybe sowed the seed for the sounds further explored here. Across the whole album, vintage clips of voices on old Haiti Radio broadcasts bring both a sense of history to the presentation and a glue to the whole song suite.

And yet, amidst all the found sound, voice samples and short instrumental passages that knit the work together, when we land on the conventional songs every single one of them is a highlight. ‘La Bal est Fini’ is a rousing number, propelled by a heavy shuffling rhythm and an unrelenting banjo pulse, elevating to the stars with Leyla’s impassioned singing on the chorus. The song ‘Vini We’ is simply beautiful, Leyla oozing with sincerity and compassion when she sings the words “they wonder why I love you, they wonder how can this be. I’m here for you like you’re here for me”. Underneath it all you see, Leyla McCalla is fast emerging as one of the essential songwriters performing in the folk and roots arena, this album simply underlines the fact.

Buy a vinyl copy of the album here: https://www.discogs.com/release/23742284-Leyla-McCalla-Breaking-The-Thermometer

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