The saga of Annie and the Caldwells’ debut album is lengthy and convoluted. The record probably wouldn’t have existed at all had crate-digging record collectors not chanced upon Waiting for the Trumpet to Sound, a 1974 single by gospel group the Staples Jr Singers, released on a Mississippi label so obscure that only one copy has ever been sold on Discogs. It came to the attention of Greg Belson, a British-born, LA-based soul DJ, who has carved out a niche playing recherché dancefloor-friendly gospel (if you want to hear the Lord’s praises being sung amid the sweatily hedonistic environs of Glastonbury’s gay club NYC Downlow, then he’s your go-to guy). He included its B-side on a 2019 compilation, The Time for Peace is Now: Gospel Music About Us.
The song’s author, Annie Caldwell, has recalled receiving “a call from a man, I think his name was David”. It was former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, whose Luaka Bop label released the compilation and then the Staples Jr Singers’ solitary album. Caldwell’s surprise at being contacted about records she had made in her early teens didn’t deter her from suggesting Byrne’s label might also be interested in the band she had been leading for the last 40 years, comprised of her husband, children and goddaughter. They were, and you can see why.
Traditional gospel has been having something of a moment, thanks to a series of archival releases, 21st century artists – most notably the Harlem Gospel Travelers – and sampling: 70s tracks by Pastor TL Barrett have been plundered by Loyle Carner and Kanye West, whose album 2019 Jesus is King was similarly packed with gospel interpolations.
Even so, a band releasing their debut album and playing hip European festivals 40 years into their existence is undoubtedly peculiar. The climate might be welcoming, but this wouldn’t have happened had Annie and the Caldwells not been exceptionally good at what they do, and Can’t Lose My (Soul) underlines just how good that is.
The vocals are raw but perfectly pitched; there’s a kind of telepathic interplay between Annie Caldwell’s lead and the harmonies of her daughters during the improvised sections of the lengthy title track and Don’t You Hear Me Calling. So is the band, who somehow contrive to sound both extremely tight and yet spontaneous: if, as Deborah Caldwell has claimed, the band “don’t practise”, then their performances here are an advert for the honing effect of playing in church every other Sunday.
They’re also musically diverse. For all Annie Caldwell claims to have co-opted her daughters into the band after hearing them singing blues – “I said: let me get those girls before the devil gets them,” she told me last year – there’s a distinct blues undertow to the title track. Dear Lord deals in tough funk, equipped with a liquid bassline that Bootsy Collins would have been proud of. I’m Going to Rise bears the influence of southern soul, the emotional edginess of the vocals cushioned by the wah-wah lushness of the music. Their uptempo tracks, meanwhile, sit in the vicinity of disco: you can detect something of Chaka Khan’s late 70s solo albums about I Made It and Wrong, the latter track momentarily shifting its gaze from the heavens to infidelity – albeit laying the blame at Satan’s door – to the accompaniment of a fabulous cyclical guitar lick that’s begging to be sampled (disco legend and sometime house producer Nicky Siano has already remixed it).
These are great, powerful, moving songs, made all the more potent by the fact that they’re recorded live, without an audience, in a church in the band’s hometown of West Point, Mississippi. The plain production makes Can’t Lose My (Soul) feel as if it’s happening before your eyes, adding a vividness and urgency, particularly in extempore moments. Mercifully, it steers clear of the kind of faux-antiquing that’s often applied to 21st-century soul music rooted in the past, as if trying to convince you that you’re listening to a long-lost album.
The lyrics steer clear of the hellfire and brimstone sermonising to which southern gospel can be prone: they never stint on describing hard times – bereavement, grief, a miraculous escape from a house fire (“God spoke to death, he told death: behave!”) – but their message is ultimately one of hope. You don’t need to share the Caldwells’ faith to find something powerful and inspiring in that, particularly given the current climate, which can easily incline you towards hopelessness; something steeped in tradition seems apropos right now. You should listen to Can’t Lose My (Soul) purely on musical terms. Moreover, it’s an album you might need.
• Can’t Lose My (Soul) is released on Luaka Bop on 21 March
This week Alexis listened to
Steven Wilson – The Overview
An 18-minute-long suite that throws in every influence imaginable from Warp Records-style techno to Floyd melancholy to gleefully OTT prog-metal and somehow, astonishingly, works: unexpected but triumphant.
