Sign up for our mailing list Real artists creating records on their own terms

News

Moor Mother Announces ‘The Great Bailout’ Haunting New Album Dissects The Ugly Realities Of British Colonialism
Thursday, January 18th, 2024

Moor Mother Announces ‘The Great Bailout’ Haunting New Album Dissects The Ugly Realities Of British Colonialism

“Like a blossom emerging from between the floorboards of a slaughterhouse, Moor Mother’s music is an act of transcending a violent, intolerable present.” - The Fader  

“Moor Mother’s work is often stark and excoriating … Camae Ayewa forces the listener to confront blood-soaked history and the bottomless sorrow of multi-generational mourning, coming at you like a priestess of the apocalypse.” - Stereogum 
 
Moor Mother creates a Black utopia with the beauty and scope to blot out our irrevocably broken reality, rooting her vision in this world only so as to better transcend it in her own.” - Paste 

How do you engage the evocative gift that is Moor Mother’s latest album The Great Bailout? Only by following the trail of verbal and sonic poetry delivered. Only by letting Moor Mother and her co-conspiring collaborators – Lonnie Holley, Mary Lattimore, Alya Al Sultani, Kyle Kidd and more - be the tour guide. 
 
Coming out on March 8, The Great Bailout is Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa’s ninth studio album and third with ANTI- Records, with production contributions on various tracks from Mary Lattimore, Lonnie Holley, Vijay Ayer, Angel Bat Dawid, Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, Aaron Dilloway and more. Called “the poet laureate of the apocalypse,” by Pitchfork, Ayewa’s music contains multitudes of instruments, voices and cacophony that take on themes of Afrofuturism and collective memory with the forebearers of jazz, hip hop and beat poetry in mind.  
 
“Research is a major part of my work, and researching history - particularly African history, philosophy and time - is a major interest,” Moor Mother said of the music’s focus on the effects of British colonialism. “Europe and Africa have a very intimate and brutal relationship throughout time. I’m interested in exploring that relationship of colonialism and liberation, in this case in Great Britain.” 
 
Today she has also shared the album’s first track. “Guilty” - featuring Mary Lattimore, Lonnie Holley and Raia Was - is a tender, atmospheric song that starts our tour through the haunting, rendered by the gentle, almost melancholic instrumentation and calling forth the crimes that were paid off but still live. Listen + watch the song’s new lyric video below.  
 
Watch “Guilty”: https://youtu.be/0ox6Xpwphuk?si=hHQb0A6tkZsBAVr-  
 
The exquisite beauty and horror conjured in the song is simultaneously dream and traumatic nightmare. “Guilty” is astounding for the poignancy and tenderness in which it invites us to dwell in our journey of facing Britain’s not just complicity in enslavement and its afterlives, but also its very making as a built environment and social-political formation. 
 
“Displacement and its effects are not discussed enough,” Moor Mother says. “The PTSD of displacement should be a focus, and as we have the opportunity to learn about things happening in the world, we also have the opportunity to learn about ourselves. We’ve been through so many different acts of systematic violence.” 
 
So what is the terrain we are invited to navigate? The backdrop is of two Acts of Parliament: the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act that established a four-year period of ‘apprenticeship’ during which the enslaved in the British Caribbean would transition from being ‘slaves’ to being free. And the 1835 Slavery Abolition Act – a loan that allowed the British Government to borrow £20 million [£17 billion in today’s money] with which to ‘compensate’ 46,000 slave owners who were losing their ‘property’ because of the legal abolition of slavery. A loan that was one of the largest in history. A loan that equaled 40% of the Treasury’s annual income. A loan that was only finally paid off in 2015. A loan that all payers of tax in the UK helped to pay off — which means that all those descendants of the once enslaved, including the so-called Windrush Generation, also helped to pay off. 
 
So: Come! Come look! Come see! Come hear! Come see London, come see Liverpool, for the first time even if it for the millionth. Know its provenance, know its haunting. Clear the mist over your eyes and heart as if the famous London Fog has been cleared by the clarion call of Moor Mother. For this is what The Great Bailout is: a call to knowing through a sonic scene that is unafraid to look a violent legacy in the eye. 

Browse by Artist

2112All Artists 100Tom Waits 74Mavis Staples 59Neko Case 51Lost In The Trees 50Sean Rowe 48Dr. Dog 45The Milk Carton Kids
41Jolie Holland 40Bettye LaVette 37Man Man 36Son Little 35Tinariwen 33Tim Fite 33DeVotchKa 31Grinderman 31Islands 29Glen Hansard 28Saintseneca 27Wilco 27Galactic 27Delicate Steve 26Andy Shauf 25The Drums 24Michael Franti and Spe... 24Xenia Rubinos 22Doe Paoro 22Bob Mould 22William Elliott Whitmo... 21Nick Cave & The Bad Se... 21The Frames 20Joe Henry 20Christopher Paul Stell... 19Booker T. Jones 19Yves Jarvis 19Sage Francis 19Cass McCombs 18Gary V 18Calexico 18Deafheaven 17John K. Samson 17Yann Tiersen 16Ramblin Jack Elliott 16Danny Elfman 16The Antlers 16Jason Lytle 14Half Waif 14Daniel Lanois 14Jeremy Ivey 14Madi Diaz 13Billy Bragg 13The Dream Syndicate 12Xavier Rudd 12Peter Silberman 12Combo Chimbita 12Girlpool 12Leyla McCalla 11Ryan Pollie 11Mose Allison 11Japandroids 11Roky Erickson 11Purr 11The Weakerthans 11Lyrics Born 11Glitterer 11Jade Jackson 11Rain Machine 10High Pulp 10Darrin Bradbury 10Moor Mother 10So Much Light 10Alfa Mist 10Christian Lee Hutson 10The Swell Season 10The Melodic 9Hey, King! 9Wynonna 9Marianne Faithfull 9Lido Pimienta 9Cameron Avery 9Josiah Johnson 9N.A.S.A. 9Curtis Harding 9M. Ward 8Katy Kirby 8Greg Graffin 8James Brandon Lewis 8Kate Davis 8Rafiq Bhatia 8Slow Pulp 8The Coup 8Solillaquists of Sound 8Cadence Weapon 7Beth Orton 7Ben Harper 7Eddie Izzard 7Dead Man's Bones 7Kelly Hogan 7Richard Reed Parry 7Title Fight 7Ben Harper and Charlie... 7Elliott Smith 7Alec Ounsworth 6Os Mutantes 6A Girl Called Eddy 6Deradoorian 6Kate Bush 6MJ Lenderman 6Broken Twin 6Bonny Doon 6Busdriver 6Waxahatchee 5Beat Connection 5Kristine Leschper 5Keaton Henson 5The Field 5Foxwarren 5One Day As A Lion 5Scott McMicken and THE... 5The Tallest Man On Ear... 5Ezra Furman 5Sam Akpro 5Art Moore 5Jasmyn 4Pops Staples 4Jackson+Sellers 4sunking 4The Good Ones 4Sparklehorse 4Ersi Arvizu 4Marketa Irglova 3Mavis Staples & Levon... 3Mothers 3Walter Wolfman Washing... 3Sierra Leones Refugee... 3Marc Ribot 3Petra Haden 3Plains 3Danny Cohen 2Jeff Tweedy 2Fleet Foxes 2Various Artists: RANGO 2ANTI- Records 1Simian Mobile Disco 1Tricky 1Merle Haggard 1Solomon Burke 1Joe Strummer And The M... 1Porter Wagoner 1The Locust 1Antibalas 1Taylor Vick 1Rogue's Gallery 1case/lang/veirs 1Various Artists: ROGUE... 1Lightman Jarvis Ecstat... 1Kronos Quartet with Br... 1Youth Group 1Blackalicious
See Full List+