Black Thunder, the new studio album from acclaimed Seattle-based artist Brittany Davis, is out today on Loosegroove Records, the label founded by Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard. Featuring Davis on keys and vocals, Evan Flory-Barnes on bass, and D’Vonne Lewis on drums, the collection was improvised in a surge of creativity across two days in the studio. Steeped in Black and Afrocentric cultural influences, its immersive, incantatory spirit resulted in Davis’ most poignant and cathartic work to date.
"Black Thunder was not initially intended to be an album. We got together in the studio for what we thought was a jam session, but once we started to play, I think we all knew something was different and beautiful about this one," explains Davis. "It all came directly from the heart and the sonic elements in the room. No prep, no road map, just pure emotion and sound."
"Brittany, Evan, and D’Vonne have, in some way, been preparing for this recording all their lives. Honing their instrumental craft and ability, of course — but more importantly, preparing their ears, emotions, and egos to be fully present and create absolutely in the moment," continues Black Thunder's producer Josh Evans. "To listen deeply and respond empathetically. To speak with uncomfortable honesty. To listen, and be vulnerable."
Black Thunder marks a shift away from the contemporary urban-soul that informed her critically-acclaimed debut album, Image Issues, a recording built upon drum machines and programmed keys; instead opting for a fully live, organic performance, one that showcases her stylistic maturation, pure expression and the breadth of her versatility.
"She was channeling something deeper," Evans adds. "Voices, spirits, the divine — something bigger than the room itself. Something more than just the three musicians playing — something older, something ancestral."
In the opening piece, “All You Get,” Davis introduces herself on the piano with a pensive, one-note octave rhythm; Flory-Barnes joins her with a hypnotic pulse. Lewis completes the triangulation with a shaker, then drums. Davis scats a melodic phrase followed by moans, chants, claps, and snaps, bringing the group somewhere else entirely, deep-set and primed for catharsis. “You get what you get / And don’t throw a fit,” Davis hurls, “I’ll show you what I get / I’ll show you I’ve evolved past all your shit / My evolution has not become flat!”
Davis continues with “Amid The Blackout Of The Night” sharing insight into her world as a blind person: "I've always wondered how a star would shine if they were visible to me, amid the blackout of the night, so many things I've never seen, but I've touched it all so it seems, amid the blackout of the night."
From celestial concerns, Davis pivots to terra firma; the swaggering title track, "Black Thunder," evokes soil, rain, mountaintops, earthquakes. On "Change Me,” Davis and Flory-Barnes hot-potato a fragmented scale between piano and bass: "Can’t be like this, too Black, too fat, and blind all at the same time," sings a self-disassembling Davis.
As with all of Black Thunder, the spoken-word “Girl (Don’t You Know)” was improvised, yet in this instance massaged and collaged with studio trickery that began as a spoken-word freestyle, but was later chopped up and layered upon itself. A companion piece, the anxious dance of “Girl (Now We’re the Same)” settles into a crepuscular mood.
Within the ethereal, soul-searching "Mirrors," Davis pits her self-perception against that from outside. "Sarah's Song" channels an enslaved woman who had 24 children—abused, ignored and forgotten. The sounds of chains and padlocks evoke the weight of ancestral pain. After the transcendent, light-and-dark, push-and-pull of "Sun And Moon," Black Thunder concludes with "Ancestors VIII," one of eight segues, all entitled "Ancestors," that connect one track to the next.
"Apropos to the title, Brit told me that at different times she felt like the voices of her ancestors were speaking through her,” Evans remembers. “We decided to summon and channel these voices, to connect and comment on the songs, almost like a Greek choir.”
Black Thunder is the work of a sui generis artist charting a course all her own. By bulldozing easy narratives and accessing the realm of pure feeling, Davis’ latest missive is a creative thunderclap destined to resonate across the ages.
