Sun Without the Heat

New Orleans-based Leyla McCalla is known for making moving, socially conscious music that takes in all her various influences, from Haitian roots to Americana. Capitalist Blues (2019) was a protest album, inspired in part by the rise of a certain man-sized Cheeto to the American presidency, and her last album, 2022’s Breaking the Thermometer told the brutal story of the journalists of Radio Haiti who risked everything to deliver the news in Haitian Creole.

Her fifth album, Sun Without the Heat, still tackles urgent issues – largely drawing lyrical inspiration from Black feminist thinkers like Octavia Butler and Alexis Pauline Gumbs – but there’s also levity. “I like when music feels urgent,” McCalla says, “but I also wanted the new album to be playful and fun.” And indeed, tracks like ‘Scaled to Survive’ and ‘Love We Had’ feel summery and bright.

But just like the album’s delightful title-track suggests, we can’t have light without dark, so there is still a vein of heaviness that balances out the playfulness. ‘Tree’, about a woman who turns herself into a tree because she worries no one will ever love her, ends with a particularly anxiety-inducing crescendo of psychedelic fuzz.

McCalla’s music palette has broadened on Sun Without the Heat as well. There’s Brazilian samba, touches of Afrobeat and even some Ethiopian folk as well as her usual Haitian and Americana fare. Another excellent offering from an ever-evolving artist.