Lady Blackbird’s ‘The City’

It begins with a piano tinkling against background chatter. Uptown jazz in a cocktail bar at the top of a skyscraper, its windows overlooking over the rainy nighttime streets. There’s a sighs of strings, and then a pause before a bass riff comes in against a rattle of congas. And then the voice of Lady Blackbird.

Born Marley Munroe in New Mexico 39 years ago, she now makes records with the guitarist/producer Chris Seefried. They wrote this song together. It’s on her new album and it’s called “The City”.

This is a story-song: “Lucille was a mother workin’ for the man / Hard-workin’ women always got a plan / She’ll get there (We’ll get there) / Gettin’ money for the kids and collect the pay / Save their money, gonna move away / To get there (We’ll get there)…” Her voice is strong — toughened by pain, although not unyielding, with a discreet use of fast vibrato, distinctive but subtle.

But then the chorus kicks in — “Show me the joy in the city / No time for pity…” — and the mood is instantly lifted by a groove that defines the way a driving four-four snare drum (here played by Tamir Barzilay) and a freer-floating bass guitar (Jon Flaugher) can together created an irresistible momentum based on the intuitive microsecond differences in their timing, the way Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson used to do at Motown. It sweeps you along, sweeps you away.

“The City” is on Lady Blackbird’s Slang Spirituals, the follow-up to 2021’s highly acclaimed Black Acid Soul. It’s 4:27 of the kind of soul music that blends a shout of triumph and defiance with an undertow of melancholy — so much more compelling than mere euphoria. Gladys Knight’s “Taste of Bitter Love” and Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker”: it’s one of those. And I suspect that it, too, will be with me for a long time.

* Lady Blackbird’s Slang Spirituals is on the BMG label.