RECESS  |  CULTURE

Recess reviews: Solange Knowles's 'A Seat at the Table'

<p>Sister of Beyoncé, Solange Knowles, released her newest album "A Seat at the Table," proving her talents as a songwriter and an artist.</p>

Sister of Beyoncé, Solange Knowles, released her newest album "A Seat at the Table," proving her talents as a songwriter and an artist.

Solange Knowles’s searingly powerful and meditative new album “A Seat at the Table” opens with “Rise,” a smooth jazz opus that packs a major punch in its two-minute run time. Delicate harmonies croon, “Fall in your ways so you can crumble/fall in your ways so you can sleep at night,” a mantra of rebuilding one’s identity to achieve a sense of catharsis that comes recognizing the self. “A Seat at the Table” addresses myriad heavy topics, specifically the racial and gender violence and inequality that have pervaded 2016, but it is a fundamentally optimistic body of work committed to trying to heal the soul rather than castigate it. The album marks a massive leap forward for Knowles as a songwriter and as a musician, and it is undeniably one of the best albums of the decade.

The second track, “Weary,” finds her singing “I’m gonna look for my body, yeah/I’ll be back real soon,” which acts as the mission statement for the entire album. Knowles has written several pieces in recent years about the systematic devaluation of black people in America, coming to a head in an essay a few months ago dealing with the humiliating experience of having a lime thrown at her by a white woman while dancing at a Kraftwerk concert

In that essay, she talked about how she felt that her body was barely her own; “A Seat at the Table” takes this pain and identity crisis and turns it into stunning music. It is almost akin to a concept album devoted to reclaiming the body and self, and while no easy resolution is reached by the outro,“Closing: The Chosen Ones,” there a sense of hope and stability that a far and welcome cry from “Weary.”

The journey between the two tracks is thematically rich and musically delightful. Knowles has a distinctive voice, lighter but nimbler than her sister’s, that bends the album’s many collaborators to her will. Features from the likes of Tweet, Sampha, Lil Wayne and Kelela abound, all of which match Knowles's high level of artistry. 

Sampha anchors the chorus on the best song on “A Seat at the Table,” “Don’t Touch My Hair,” which defies its defensive title by encouraging a dialogue on the comprehension of cultural symbolism and commodification. It also sounds beautiful, with production by Sampha that’s both ethereal and deeply funky in equal measure. The late-night groove of “Junie” recalls her work on 2012’s “True,” marrying a piano-driven bop to a veneration of black female identity.

“A Seat at the Table” is more than a great album; it’s an important one. It acts as a salve to an immeasurably taxing year, a beacon of reflection, hope, and sincere affection in a time where all of these virtues are needed. On the lovely “Don’t Wish Me Will,” she stands firm in her convictions. “’Cause when I say what I mean, you ought to know/you’ve got to know,” she exhorts, and “A Seat at the Table” is an indelible statement of intentionality from an artist who has come into her own.

Discussion

Share and discuss “Recess reviews: Solange Knowles's 'A Seat at the Table'” on social media.