Bizhiki have released their new album Unbound, and shared focus track ‘She’s All We Have’ today through Jagjaguwar .
Bizhiki is the collaborative endeavour of celebrated solo artists S. Carey, Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, and Joe Rainey. S. Carey is a celebrated solo artist and is also a longtime member (touring and recording) of Bon Iver. Rainey’s debut album Niineta was featured in the New York Times, Guardian, Pitchfork, The Current and others.
Unbound is a confluence of sounds bringing traditional, experimental and powwow music into an expanded musical palette. It brings together the layered beauty of S. Carey with the powerful, innovative powwow music of Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings and Joe Rainey.
Unbound’s themes are clear and emphatic: nature, healing, protection, loss, family both blood and chosen. The title Unbound refers squarely to earth and nature. Rainey explains, “When we sing ‘she speaks the truth unbound’, the truth is all of nature: storms, earthquakes, mudslides. She’s telling us what we need to know. No one can conquer these things, ever’’.
‘She’s All We Have’ is a gorgeous and heartbreaking dirge about native displacement and environmental encroachment, with Jennings singing a combination of straightforward English and vocalization that almost brings to mind the high and lonesome sound. Spare piano, saxophone sighs, and a light, steely guitar give the song a mournful, contemplative beauty. It is both confrontational and tender, recalling artists like Lonnie Holley in its loving but fierce call to action.
Rainey and Jennings had collaborated many times through the years; the two Ojibwe singers came from different backgrounds and upbringings, but linked more closely when they met Sean Carey and began doing appearances and collaborations at Eaux Claires Festival. Jennings explains, “Joe and I have collaborated with a lot of different entities and been asked to sing worldwide. But lots of people don’t fully accept us; they bring us in and tell us what to do. That wasn’t the case when we met this new musical family.” Instead, the musical community shared by S. Carey, Bon Iver, and their cohorts across the northern midwest music scene, invited the most open environment possible for experimentation.
‘Gigawaabamin (Come Through)’ features Mike Sullivan, a Native singer from Lac Courte Oreilles in Northern Wisconsin, as well as additional contributions from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Stephen Garrington (Low), alongside Bizhiki. According to Carey: “[The track] was first born out of (Justin) jamming with Mike, as well as Joe and Dylan years ago.”
Following lead single “Gigawaabamin (Come Through)” featuring Mike Sullivan, the title track of the album is exemplary of Bizhiki’s unique cultural and musical intersection.
The song begins with an electronically modified hand drum accentuated by a plaintive piano chord, leading into a somber warning sung by Carey: “Be calm when she speaks/she speaks the truth, unbound.” The words were pulled by Carey from Rainey’s notebook, right in the studio. “I wrote those lines around a string of tornadoes and hurricanes — this wrath of mother nature that was hitting everybody,” Rainey says. “There was so much relief needed for people who were displaced, so many people out there hurting.” Carey’s warning is joined to an urgent topline sung by Bizhikiins Jennings, as arresting as it is beautiful.
Bizhiki – Unbound
Unbound Tracklist
- Franklin Warrior
- Unbound
- SGC
- She’s All We Have
- Rez News
- Nashke!
- Float Back By
- Trying To Live
- Gigawaabamin (Come Through) (feat. Mike Sullivan)
- Call Me Home
- 11. Medicine River
Bizhiki Online
