Capitalist Blues

A Songlines favourite since her days with Carolina Chocolate Drops, McCalla's solo debut Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes was one of our albums of the year in 2013. Mixing songs that reflected her dual Louisiana/Haitian heritage, 2016's A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey was every bit as impressive – and Capitalist Blues now makes it a stunning hat-trick for the New Orleans-based singer and cellist.

Like its predecessors there's a strong moral core to the album, which loosely operates as a song cycle about living in an unjust society in which money doesn't just talk; it swears, and the poor are left to fend for themselves. Produced by Jimmy Horn of New Orleans R&B band King James & the Special Men and featuring a posse of top Louisiana musicians plus the Haitian collective Lakou Mizik, McCalla's songs range from swinging trad jazz (the title-track) to zydeco (‘Oh My Love’) via Haitian rara (‘Lavi Vye Neg’), calypso (‘Money is King’), ragtime (‘Me and My Baby’) and reverberating swamp rock (‘Heavy as Lead’). Less folk-oriented than her previous solo albums, the mood is defiantly upbeat, fired by a powerful spirit of resistance, which offers the hope that a-change-is-gonna-come. “I never imagined the Capitalist Blues would make me so damn happy,” she says. “And perhaps that represents the paradox of it all.”