While she exorcised her demons on her first solo album, Outside Child, released in 2021, Montrealer Allison this time lets the light fully enter on her second attempt.
The Returner is a feel-good record. The texts touch us, the music carries us away and the divine voice of Allison Russell excels.
After his three Grammy nominations, after his Americana Music Honors awards
We dance almost all the time during The Returner, a 45-minute album lined with catchy tempo songs. There is always Americana in the music of Allison Russell. The folk is present, just much further back. The gospel is often invited. The country is not far away. She plays with all the styles of black music and makes them her own, in an ensemble that skillfully combines a classical side and a more modern side.
The title track, the slowest and purest on the record, sounds like a pretty prayer, a mantra. The superb Requiem, at the very end of the disc, echoes it. Sung in harmony in the verses as well as the chorus, the folk ballad is listened to like a lullaby which finally takes off into a lively gospel anthem.
Eve Was Black pays homage to African-American culture, to the roots that formed the rich black heritage. The short second part of the song, sung in French, is particularly refreshing.
Stay Right Here is completely disco and funky, totally intoxicating. We quickly realize when listening to this record that Allison Russell can do almost everything, that the arrangement of all genres on The Returner is quite a challenge.
Snake Life is complex, its groove takes us in different directions, the strings and the bass working in concert to create a slightly offbeat atmosphere that Russell’s singing intensifies magnificently.
Allison Russell is a poet. You just have to read them without music to understand to what extent the musical coating is as valuable as the words she sings to us. Wendy
