ANNIE AND THE CALDWELLS
Can’t Lose My (Soul) (Luaka Bop)
MUSIC FANS – those who grew up with physical product and still like to own it; those who have only had their stuff streaming, where it can exist one day and be gone the next – know we often exist in either feast or famine. This is not a time of famine for lovers of old school soul.
This is a boon, sometimes a burden, and in this case I’m talking about new artists/recordings, not discoveries of original period artists that missed you then but excite you now – as happened with me recently when hearing a single track by Margie Joseph set me off immediately to buying five of her albums originally released from the early to mid’ 70s. (Yes, very much worth it, if you’re wondering.)
Decent, if not necessarily great, revival soul is easy enough to find, from Brooklyn to Birmingham to Melbourne. There are people doing the sound right, the style right, the groove right, so that you easily could think you are hearing something from 1966 or 1972, and occasionally 1958. There are people stretching the genre broader and, with expanded lineups, thicker, and there are some, like the recent visitor here, Jalen Ngonda, stripping it back to barebones.
And when you stumble across somebody doing it well, and all those buttons of yours are being pushed, it’s easy to get excited. But eventually you can find yourself a tad cynical, or at least sceptical about your own reaction or the hyperbole of those pushing it. Is this the sugar rush of familiarity or something that is going to keep giving? A competent genre piece or deeper quality?
Which is where we come in with Annie And The Caldwells, a (genuinely) family band from Mississippi: matriarch Annie upfront, daughters Deborah and Anjessica and goddaughter Toni bringing voice, husband Joe on guitar, and sons Willie Jr and Abel as the rhythm section. There is a lot of fuss around them and this debut album which arrives 20 years or so after they formed as a way of keeping the younger members close to the church-based gospel of their parents while not giving up their love of funk and soul.
Is the fuss justified? Yup, it sure is. You can dance to this, you can preach to this, you can revel in the drop-jawed power of Annie, Deborah and Anjessica, and smooth out creases with the moments of glistening smoothness. Across its six tracks (the album doesn’t go much beyond the half hour) you will hear the Staple Singers and Philadelphia’s Sigma Sound Studios as much as Sly Stone, and on half the album you can explore in depth – as in two 7-minute tracks and one north of 10 minutes – the intersection of psychedelia, funk, blues and gospel in ways that sometimes tap directly into the likes of Parliament/Funkadelic. Albeit without the strong suggestion of chemical interference.
It does its job, and then some. Take the final song, Dear Lord, which sets its stall out early and does not deviate: mid-tempo leaning into something punchy; a loping rhythm over which organ, in firm statements, and guitar, delivered in splashes, decorate; vocals which exhort with grit but not excess. It feels righteous but also adult, conscious of its earthiness and not just eyes looking heavenwards.
This is even more evident in the title track, which has a slow nightclub-blues shuffle and almost caressing backing vocals that are a few loosened buttons from temptation. The build-up is steady, the organ doing the heavy lifting most of the time, but like a San Francisco hippie band crossed with a booted and suited Stax outfit, there is a hypnotic momentum that grips and from the eight minute mark onwards you will probably have your head down and moving side to side, eyes closed and just soaking in it.
The Caldwells don’t need seven or eight or 10 minutes to do the business though, doing biblical metaphors, late-night soaking-in-it atmosphere (and subtle acoustic guitar in the background) with regret and hope in less than half the time. Even more crisp, the first single and opening track, Wrong, has a finger-snap rhythm that demands you stride down the street with some pride in your stride and a raspy, urgent voice leading you with eagerness. It hits and quits in two minutes and 23 seconds, and if you aren’t moving, check your pulse.
When the family do a couple of shows here in June my only question will be, will we want to go to a club or a church afterwards? Maybe both. Old school.
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