By Michael J. West | Published October 2024
This haunting, profound, astonishing record is this reviewer’s pick for the year’s best — and it isn’t even close. Indeed, few albums released in any year achieve alto saxophonist/composer Wilkins’ improbable balance of ethereal and earthy, of searching and grounded, of virtuosic and plainspokenly lyrical. The afore-used “astonishing” doesn’t do it justice — but there’s no better word, either.
Blues Blood is Wilkins’ meditation on his own heritage in its many flavors and nuances. It’s also his first album to use vocals; while his core bandmates — pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Rick Rosato, drummer Kweku Sumbry — are each at their best (as are guest drummer Chris Dave and guitarist Marvin Sewell, the latter with particularly gorgeous, and appropriately spectral, work on “Apparition”), the singers stamp the album with its identity. The beauty of male vocalist Yaw Agyeman’s performance on “If That Blood Runs East,” attenuated but informed by gospel and R&B, is exquisite. So is Cécile McLorin Salvant, doing her some of her subtlest work on “Dark Eyes Smile” (with magnificent accompaniment by Thomas, and solos by Rosato and Wilkins, offsetting her), and Carnatic singer Ganavya’s soft croon on “Everything.” The variety of artistic perspectives that these vocalists represent is as sublime in itself as their performances are.
Undoubtedly, though, the linchpin of this recording is folk singer-songwriter June McDoom, the album’s featured vocalist. Her soft, breathy, insinuative delivery irradiates Blues Blood from the opening ballad “Matte Glaze” through the closing whispers of the epic title-track finale. She’s especially suited to the weightless glide of “Motion.” However, it’s her call-and-response performance with McLorin Salvant on the album’s other epic, the stately but kinetic “Afterlife Residence Time,” that most resounds. Each delivers evocative, achingly poetic lines and images capped with “These are my dreams,” with an otherworldly authority that will no doubt linger in yours.
