This jazz-rooted, seven-piece London combo first whetted the palettes of forward-looking music connoisseurs with their 2019 self-titled EP, and became word-of-mouth sensations on the strength of their 2022 full-length debut Could We Be More. Now, in a development sure to please the thousands of new ear canals currently ingesting Kokoroko’s entrancing, groovy sounds, Tuff Times Never Last leapfrogs genres even more gracefully, weaving Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat and the larger Black music diaspora through shimmering threads of pop, R&B, and neo-soul.
The glorious highlife guitar noodlings and cresting horns of the group’s earlier work are as effective as ever on songs such as the sumptuous “Idea 5 (Call My Name)” and the yearning, slap…
« Dom Salvador, Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad – JID024 (2025) Mike Polizze – Around Sound (2025) »