Bleep

Solange has always been a force of sophisticated artistry. A vocal powerhouse who debuted at 16, she completely reinvented herself with her second album as a connoisseur of eclectic sounds and styles, then stepped into independence with the new wave styled True EP. But it was A Seat At The Table in 2016 that truly cemented Solange’s position in the upper echelons of the avant garde, crystallising her visions of Black womanhood and rejoicing in Black culture.

If her 2019 album When I Get Home is the praxis, A Seat At The Table is the theory that informed it. On a record that is crafted with intent from start to finish, Solange focusses a microscopic, analytical eye on the structures and systems we all move through, without leaving the realms of emotion and catharsis for a second. Supported by a collage framework of interviews situating the album’s themes, A Seat At The Table is painful and sobering in the issues that it confronts, yet a healing balm for the power and strength that it evokes.

Lifting infectiously kinetic shades of synth funk, neo soul, and R&B from the Black musical canon, Solange makes room for deeply personal feelings throughout the album’s intimate conversation. Vibrant, organic drums and liquid strings score a mellifluous account of dancing around depression on ‘Cranes In The Sky’, while heartbeat kicks draw a lifeline beneath intricately woven melodies and braided rhythms on ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’, anthemic with an insatiably catchy refrain from Sampha and defiantly grandiose brass arrangements. All this leads to one of the album’s most moving cuts: ‘Don’t Wish Me Well’ is gauzy with 80s inflected synths and organs, a climactic ballad on growth and self assurance where Solange’s golden harmonies ascend into the stars.

A Seat At The Table is a bold thesis statement that will stand the test of time in the decades to come, and one that truly sounded out 2016.