Photo : Daniel L Johnson
Out now on Drink Sum Wtr
Aja Monet has a voice so mellifluous, so deep – in all senses of the word – that it arrives ready to transport you to astral plains. The self-styled American “surrealist blues poet”, activist and producer begins her second album, The Color of Rain, telling you to “feed, fuel and fight” for “whatever touches your heart” or "fires the engine of your chest”. Woozy saxophone, drums and electric bass prop up her messaging in glossy, cosmic neo-soul. For a moment, all is better.
Hollyweird brings to the party chaotic bass fuzz and lyrics about hypocritical celebrities fleeing the LA wildfires, including the zinger: “Can a millionaire be homeless?”
Not for long. The album’s lead single, Hollyweird, brings to the party chaotic bass fuzz, a high, bleeping pulse, and lyrics about hypocritical celebrities fleeing the 2025 wildfires in LA, a city she describes as looking like ”an arsonist’s wet dream”. She also gives short shrift to an actor who compares the sight of the burning Palisades to Palestine (this was Jamie Lee Curtis at a film promotion event – Monet leaves her unnamed). “Never mentions the Rafah border, the cut-off of 2,000 aid trucks, neglects to mention body bags,” says Monet, like a younger member of 1960s-founded Harlem collective the Last Poets, or a more rooted Laurie Anderson. Then comes her killer zinger: “Can a millionaire be homeless?”
Three years after her debut album, When the Poems Do What They Do, Monet’s poetic star enters the mainstream. Last week, she performed on Later … with Jools Holland, and in the autumn she was the Barbican’s artist in residence and sold out a headline show at the London jazz festival. Her music exudes sonic lushness, but her words – serrated, confrontational – cut through the calm. Take the start of Every Media Minute, with hi-hat shimmers and soft piano: “Every media minute/America’s hysterical hands drip blood/A pointing finger inward/The people scroll over bodies/Wet dreams of war.”
As well as being a merciless observer, Monet is a mean meditative guru, with tracks like Withness and Love Is a Choosing ready for the spiritual retreat (although at moments they feel over-ripe). Elsewhere, gorgeous images spring from her poetry. In Skinfolk, accompanied by warm synthesisers reminiscent of the work of Beverley Glenn-Copeland, she celebrates her colour – “Of Garvey’s star line, or Nina’s fearless freedom/A sheet of obsidian silk/Moonbeams hollering”. In For the Congo, she speaks of “Pulsing footsteps in a chest/The skin of a drum/The shaking brush of bruise/Of the blue black truth”, as congas, djembe and a talking drum pick up the pace, fitting accompaniments to her discussions of dictatorships and conflict.
The album soars when it plays with sound. You hear this invention when Monet delivers I Came to the Poem over the taps of a typewriter, or when urgent vocal gymnastics, which recall experimental vocal performer and composer Meredith Monk, add deeper layers to I Know that I Don’t Know. The thrilling handclap and double-bass counterpoint behind the words of Working Class Musicians also lingers, showing how Monet’s music, at its best, is both accessible and arresting, wild and wise.
Jude Rogers is a culture journalist, broadcaster and radio documentary maker. Her book, The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Prize and the Penderyn Music Prize, and her latest documentaries include Uneasy Listening for BBC Radio 4 and Erik Satie: The Minimalist Muse for BBC Radio 3.