Arise

"For her more adventuresome (...) third album (...), Arise,McFarlane digs deeper into her Afro-Caribbean roots with much of the same crew from her prior sessions, led by drummer and producer Moses Boyd with the likes of saxophonist Binker Golding and pianist Peter Edwards. This time, McFarlane and company reconfigure "Peace Begins Within" into a driving, tightly controlled post-bop groove with the singer's upper register deployed in the chorus to dazzling effect, as moving here as it is in the [Nora] Dean original. For the Congos' "Fisherman," accompanied primarily by only strings and piano, McFarlane proves that bass pressure isn't required to provide weight".

Read review

"The Mobo-winning London singer Zara McFarlane has sounded like a class act for longer than a star-fixated world might realise ... Arise may be too long on genre music and short on improv for jazz hardliners, but for many it will be a fascinating perspective on an African Caribbean family lineage shared by McFarlane and her gifted drummer and producer Moses Boyd. McFarlane's Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson connections are audible, but she has rarely sounded more comfortable with herself and with jazz ... "Silhouette", a brass-bandish dirge featuring Shabaka Hutchings' gently penetrative bass clarinet and McFarlane's quiet coda, is the highlight. Explicit jazz isn't dominant, but its thinking always is".

Read review