Wayo

On the opening title-track of Benjamin's third album, the guitar riffs explode like Led Zeppelin and the drums detonate like a cluster bomb over which Benjamin's deep, soulful voice wails like a woman possessed. The effect is so intense, so cathartic that you wonder how she can keep it up. Yet she does, with a force-of-nature muscularity that is remarkable.

Many will be familiar with Benjamin's back story from our May 2020 cover story (#157). Born in Haiti to vodou-venerating parents, she grew up in a Catholic orphanage and found her voice and musical direction in 2017 when she teamed up with the French guitarist Matthis Pascaud. Wayo represents a further development in her emergence as the charismatic queen of vodou blues-rock, as she digs deeper than ever before into the African roots of the blues on tracks such as ‘Haut là Haut’ and ‘Freedom Fire’, which one would have loved to have heard Nina Simone sing. But her primary purpose is to rock out hard and loud enough to raise every spirit in the vodou pantheon. On ‘Taye Banda’ she sounds like a spooked version of Siouxsie & The Banshees, while elsewhere you might be reminded of Alabama Shakes or The Black Keys. It's storming stuff that will leave you spellbound in every sense.