Spectreview: SassyBlack – Ancient Mahogany Gold

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“Dance, feel, heal, repeat
Natural therapy”

Seattle often garners this weird reputation as a stopgap, a city where artists come to hone their craft before they break through to some higher plane somewhere else. It’s why we feel the need to value whatever we’ve got right now, even as they’ve got their eyes set on greener pastures. Catherine Harris-White may be on a fast-track to LA or wherever she might be headed career-wise, but thank god she’s still part of our community, representing a genre of music that Seattle doesn’t often get attention for. As SassyBlack, she puts her faith in the process of improvisation, constructing crystalline R&B/soul songs out of humble components, and it’s this process that lends her many well-deserved comparisons to pioneering neo-soul artists like Angie Stone and Erykah Badu. It’s her willingness to level with her audience that lifts her above the crowd; from the personableness of her live shows to her Instagram Video sessions, where she plays behind a synth pad backgrounded by various tapestries, she strives (and succeeds) to be the kind of hard-working, approachable artist that steadily gains the world’s attention.

Ancient Mahogany Gold, her new LP, is full of static songs, the kind that feel like they could go on forever given the opportunity, but now there’s a shift in feel that suggests SassyBlack is potentially onto something unique to her art. For one, it feels more like a whole work than anything else in her discography. Though there aren’t any clear standouts (except perhaps “Depression”, a banger of a track anchored by the mantric power of dance), every track feels part of a grand scheme, from the uneasy shuffle of “Left or Right” to the bubbling lust of “Taste”, all the way to the vibrant rallying cry of “Black Excellence”. It’s tied together by carefully controlled production, the kind that feels consciously reined in. Underground R&B artists nowadays often feel the need to turn the vibes up to eleven for maximum effectiveness, creating environments that overwhelm the senses with incense and cordials instead of putting faith in the powers of cohesion and composition. There are certainly good vibes here, but they’re healing vibes, the kind that remind you that perfection is a trap, that life is better in numbers, that the only one holding you back is you. It’s heartening to see SassyBlack take a direction that could lead to some exciting, frontier-focused music down the line, but for now, it’s good enough that’s she’s giving us ways to help deal with the weighty chaos of the day-to-day.

Recommended for breezy Sunday noons.