NON-PROFIT MUSIC FOR THE PROTESTS: SAULT – UNTITLED (Black Is)

SAULT turned out to be one of the biggest out-of-nowhere success stories of 2019: a mysterious, unidentifiable band of instrumentalists and singers whose two enigmatically-titled albums both managed to achieve worldwide attention after slipping through the cracks upon their release. Now that they’re on the global radar, they’ve returned back to Earth with a double-album’s worth of new material in support of the ongoing anti-racism protests.

Here’s the bottom line: if you like SAULT, chances are you’ll heartily enjoy this record. If you’ve listened to 5 or 7, you already know exactly what you’re getting in this package: clear-eyed communal grooves that rotate and transform with a spirited ease. Considering how much more explicitly political 7 was over the party-inclined 5, UNTITLED (Black Is) essentially continues that trend, albeit with an exploratory ambition that reveals itself in its back half. Across that stretch lies songs like the synthy hymnal of “Eternal Life” and the brief radio collage “June Child” fit the scope of SAULT’s previous signature sound but also feel like genuinely new territory for the collective.

As always, the musicianship is undeniable and the music remains as inviting as ever, from the smooth bounce of “Wildfires” to the  to the long-drawn breaths of “Hard Life”. It’s the kind of music that invades the body without asking anything of its audience, and while it carries a pointed tone its more interested in softening scars and providing some small form of sanctuary. Its best moments, like the quietly-seething “Sorry Ain’t Enough” and the Kiwanuka-featuring “Bow,” manage to pull off both tricks at the same time, conveying the pain of Black existence in environments that don’t read as painful.

The band’s approach here definitely prioritizes quantity over quality, and in different circumstances several of these tracks would probably have been left as B-sides. There’ll also be some who find UNTITLED (Black Is) a little too platitudinous at times; though the band dedicates several interludes to reassurances that may placate the heart, the time of its release arguably demands a stronger message of action rather than empty placation. That being said, that kind of message is also not SAULT’s responsibility, and considering the band’s intention to donate every dollar of album sales to charities, it’s somewhat disingenuous to complain about something as negligible as album flow. The point is the celebration of community and the support of resistance against its suppression, two points that show up in spades across this record. There may be a lot of stuff going on in this record, but it’s all representative of what the band does best, and so in that sense UNTITLED (Black Is) delivers everything that made SAULT such a force to be reckoned with last year.