Hiatus Kaiyote
Mood Valiant
Brainfeeder
Buy via Official Store | Listen Below
In these impatient, immediate times of instant gratification a six-year wait for an album might stretch the patience of some. When you’ve waited for a new D’Angelo album though, six years is the blink of an eye. Besides, life is to be lived and challenges are to be overcome by the musicians and groups we hold dear and cherish.
Hiatus Kaiyote have had their fair share (and more) of both of those things since their 2015 album Choose Your Weapon. Among the challenges was singer-guitarist Nai Palm dealing with breast cancer—the same disease that claimed her mother when she was a young girl. All of which means that however welcome the new album Mood Valiant is for us as listeners, it must be even more welcome for them as a group.
In addition to the personal upheavals they have faced, they also return newly signed to Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. Rarely have two entities belonged together more than the home of Thundercat and these Australian purveyors of a unique form of jazz, funk and soul. Indeed, it is hard to adequately describe what type of music they produce, but no matter what, it has always been organic and rooted mainly in the four members of the band.
Not only has the music been organic in terms of the instrumentation, but it has also been concerned with organisms and the natural world in its lyrical content and presentation. The cover of debut Tawk Tomahawk from 2013 features a drawing of a ferocious canine mid-roar and “Ocelot” (hardly an everyday animal) features the line “My ocelot tongue is sharp and it’ll eat you up.”
Fast forward to 2015’s Choose Your Weapon and the cover is a primate, equally irked and mid-howl and “Borderline With My Atoms” features the line “Coyote bone, flex the animal spirit.” Elsewhere there is the instrumental “Cicada” and “Swamp Thing” with its talons curling. The natural world and its ability to strike awe and terror in equal measure is at least some part of Hiatus Kaiyote’s character.
Mood Valiant may lack the animal on the cover (instead opting for abstract art), but the album reflects the beauty and danger of the natural tropical world brilliantly and makes a great many references to nature in its lyrics, even more so than previous work. It is telling that the major contributor outside of the core group is Brazilian legend of samba and soul, Arthur Verocai. United by their origins in tropical locales, the shared understanding of (tropical) life in all its facets is on display here.
There’s a comparison with this album to being in the rainforest. Just as you can stare upwards awestruck at the natural beauty of the canopy and the brightly colored creatures that populate it and simultaneously be aware of the nastier squirming creatures on the ground that can waylay an unsuspecting traveler, so this album has the charm and beauty to make you stand still and admire it, while delivering reflections on life’s darker side.
Nowhere is this link more apparent than on lead single and standout track “Get Sun.” It is a miraculous blast of sunshine with joyous twinkling keys, completed with Verocai’s genius inclusion of strings and horns before the final 90 seconds melt away to almost become the sound of the rainforest with the whispers and echoes of the track decaying to mulch.
Furthermore though, the forest is symbolic of life—life in all its complexity, riven with the good and the bad and confronting its own mortality. On the band’s most straightforward song to date (the piano and strings ballad “Stone Or Lavender”), Nai Palm sings: “Please believe me when I say / Someday it’ll be okay . . . I don’t wanna be small / I want to be full of life,” and it is impossible not to be moved by the sentiments and the fractured beauty of her voice.
“All The Words We Don’t Say” and “Rose Water” also offer chances to be cut to the quick by her intense, impassioned delivery. She cuts through the stutter and stammer of the inventive drum patterns, constantly wringing the feeling out of every word, every syllable.
Album closer “Blood and Marrow” goes beyond its mere title to offer birds tweeting and the sound of the forest once again. There are frequent references to animals and nature—even on the delicious, heart-broken groove of “Sparkle Tap Break Up.” Waratah, cobras and Deadly Nightshade mentions combine with Nai Palm’s imperious delivery to create another gem.
It is noticeable that this album, in comparison to those that came before, is less given to sudden changes in tempo and tangential investigations mid-song. For some, that may be a loss of some of the charm of the group, while others may see it as a broadening of their musical palette—for me, the balance is expertly maintained. There are enough of the idiosyncrasies that intrigue me, while the new additions to their sound are equally welcome.
Hiatus Kaiyote are an utterly unique band and have a sound that defies labels and draws upon a wealth of diverse influences to create something that eludes easy definition. This album merely adds to the array of styles they have mastered and shows a group unbowed but inspired by the hardships they have faced.
Notable Tracks: “All The Words We Don’t Say” | “Get Sun” | “Red Room” | “Sparkle Tape Break Up”
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