Lady Blackbird makes her extremely welcome return with brand new studio album Slang Spirituals, out September 13th.
Against a thundering backbeat, the first taste of the record arrives with the powerful, contagious anthem in waiting ‘Reborn’ – which finds Lady Blackbird full of freedom, acceptance and without apology. ‘We die a little to be born again, so I drowned her in flames/ And now she’s been reborn,’ she exclaims, in a track oozing in triumph. Listen here.
Collaborating once again with Black Acid Soul producer Chris Seefried, the pair produce a second album that not only embodies the freewheeling, emotive Lady Blackbird sound, but that also taps into deeply vulnerable lyrics that recount the singer’s challenging ascent to musical stardom.
Growing up in the small town of Farmington, New Mexico, Lady Blackbird was raised in a religious Christian household and began singing as soon as she could walk. “Once I entered my teenage years, I started to realise that religion was something that was put on me and it never felt right,” she says. “As I also began to develop my own identity as a queer woman, I felt judged as an outcast and labelled as a sinner. It was burying who I really was and I needed to find a way out.”
In taking charge of her own life and her own sound, Lady Blackbird walks a new path, making each note on Slang Spirituals a step in a radically different direction. Across 11 tracks Lady Blackbird puts her sweeping, cinematic vocal power to use on everything from the soulful orchestral fanfares of ‘Let Not (Your Heart Be Troubled)’ to the finger-picking folk storytelling of ‘Man On A Boat’, euphoric gospel empowerment of ‘Like A Woman’ and the seven-minute psychedelic soul instrumental of ‘When The Game Is Played On You’.
“I had to dig my way out of a grave to be able to finally breathe and sing about who I really am,” Lady Blackbird says. “This is me, full of freedom, acceptance and without hypocrisy. It’s also something I think a lot of people can relate to – that human quest to find yourself and take back your power, to get to the place of radiating who you are without apology.”
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