Jazz
Meshell Ndegeocello has unveiled her version of Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side”, sung as a three-way vocal with Bill Callahan and Chris Thile. It’s the fourth and final preview of “Synonym”, out 2 October through Blue Note.
The album is fifteen cover songs, each with a different guest. Cynthia Erivo features on “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)”, Chaka Khan on “Islands In The Stream”, Cat Power on “Don’t You Want Me”, Brandi Carlile on “Golden Ring”, ANOHNI on “I Got You Babe”, and Lianne La Havas, Robert Glasper, Lizz Wright, Moses Sumney and WILLOW also appear, with WILLOW singing Temple Of The Dog’s “Hunger Strike”. The repertoire spans sixties folk to early-2000s hip-hop, by way of seventies soul and country and eighties R&B and electro-boogie.
“Bill Callahan’s voice feels beguiling to me, and it pulls you in,” Ndegeocello says of the Dylan track, and of Thile: “He’s a very sensible person; I love the earthiness of his voice.”
She produced it herself with David Gamson and Abe Rounds. It’s her third album for Blue Note, following “The Omnichord Real Book” and “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin”.
Text by Aina Torrents