Staples Jr Singers – 7th Level Music

Top 20 albums of 2022: #’s 5 – 1

Here we are at the top five albums I reviewed in 2022. It was a great year for music, and these are what stood out for me among all the good stuff out there.

#5: Jacques Greene – Fantasy

As I’ve mentioned before, 2022 was a great year for electronic music, and this EP from Jacques Greene topped my list of that kind of music. It mixes house, drum and bass, ambient, and a bit of synth wave into a luscious brew.

#4: The Staples Jr. Singers – When Do We Get Paid

This reissue of classic gospel funk tracks by The Staples Jr. Singers is stunning. The amount of groove and friskiness in these songs is almost overwhelming. The instrumentation and harmonizing are outstanding, and there’s enough soul for two churches.

#3: Yard Act – The Overload

This is the best post-punk album I heard all year. Everything on it is razor sharp: the wit, the guitar angles, the grooves, the drum sounds, and the slightly snarled tongue-in-cheek vocals.

#2: The Black Angels – Wilderness of Mirrors

The Black Angels‘ new album was a great return for them. It explores the stress of modern times through walls of distorted guitars, reverb-laden vocals, powerful drums, and mind-warping sound. The Black Angels have yet to put out a bad record, but this one somehow set the bar even higher for psych-bands to follow.

#1: A Place to Bury Strangers – See Through You

A Place to Bury Strangers came back with a new lineup and some of Oliver Ackermann‘s most revealing lyrics about the end of friendships, loneliness, grief, over-reliance on technology, and the overall anxiety everyone’s been feeling since 2019. Ackermann put it all out there and walloped us with more honesty and distortion that you can almost stand.

Let’s look forward to a great 2023!

Keep your mind open.

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Review: The Staples Jr. Singers – When Do We Get Paid (2022 reissue)

I’m not sure if I can relate in one blog post, or even several, how soulful and lovely When Do We Get Paid by The Staples Jr. Singers is. You’re hooked from the first notes of “Get on Board,” and the album takes you into a blissful, funky, soulful place without worry or strife

What’s even more amazing is how When Do We Get Paid has gone relatively unheard for the last four decades. Only a small number of copies were pressed in the 1970s, and this re-release is easily one of the best finds of the year. Annie, R.C., and Edward Brown took the name of their band from their love of the Staples family singers. The Staples Jr.’s toured the American south and blazed the gospel and grooves for years, and have each since gone on to their own respective music careers.

In modern speak, the album is full of bangers: “I’m Going to a City” will get you dancing in the pews and in the honky-tonks the Browns used to play. “Somebody Save Me” has sultry Alabama blues sweat all over it. I once heard someone say, more or less, “The difference between R&B and gospel is you replace ‘baby’ or ‘honey’ with ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ in the lyrics.” “Somebody Save Me” perfectly embodies this concept.

“Trouble of the World” is a slow groove that has Annie Brown proclaiming how she’ll (and all of us) instantly forget the problems of this place of illusion once she passes beyond the veil. Indeed, she’s “Waiting for the Trumpet to Sound” on the following track, and you can’t help but start listening for it with her.

On “I Feel Good,” the Staples Jr. Singers let us know that we should all feel good in the knowledge that our sins have been forgiven. The title track has the band holding their heads high despite the racism they faced in 1970s southern U.S. (“More than three years the Staples have sung down here. All the music, here and there, sometimes trouble, sometimes heartbreak…call us everything but a child of God, but we not worrying about that…”).

“On My Journey Home” is almost a garage rock floor-stomper, and R.C.’s guitar work on “Too Close” touches the edges of psychedelic rock. The groove on “Send It on Down” is so good that it (and the whole album, really) must be inspired by the Holy Ghost, as they sing about throughout the track. The album ends with the uplifting “I Got a New Home,” which will get you out of your seat and clapping.

This album should be considered a classic. Heck, I’m surprised Moby or Fatboy Slim haven’t created an entire remix album of it. It’s a stunning work, and it deserves to be heard everywhere.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

The Staples Jr. Singers release “I’m Looking for a Man” from rare 1970s gospel / funk album.

The Staples Jr. Singers share “I’m Looking For A Man,” from the forthcoming reissue of their sole album, When Do We Get Paid, originally released in 1975, out May 6th on Luaka Bop. In conjunction, the family from Aberdeen, Mississippi, share a live performance video of the new single recorded this past January, and announce a slate of performances in New York City taking place on Saturday, April 23rd, at Baby’s All Right, The Lot Radio, and Friends & Lovers.

Following an invite-only, press preview at The Paris Review in Chelsea, these concerts will be the Staples Jr. Singers’ first performances as a group in over 40 years. It will be their first-ever visit to New York City, as well as an extremely rare appearance outside the South. Presented by Luaka Bop and Boom Collective, this ambitious series of shows—three in one day!—will begin with a “Gospel Brunch” at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg, then move outdoors to The Lot in Greenpoint, where the Staples Jr. Singers will be broadcast live on-air. While these first two shows will be free, the day will be capped off with a grand finale, an extended set at Friends & Lovers in Crown Heights. It may be one of the best performances that you’ll see all year. The original members of the family band—the siblings Edward Brown, A.R.C. Brown, and Annie Brown Caldwell—will be joined onstage by members of Annie’s family, including her husband Wille Caldwell Sr. and their children Willie Jr., Abel, and Deborah. For tickets, RSVP and more information, go to JuniorSingers.com.

Listen to “I’m Looking For A Man” by the Staples Jr. Singers

Watch the Staples Jr. Singers Perform “I’m Looking For A Man” (January 2022)

Like many gospel groups at the time, the Staples Jr. Singers were a family band: Annie Brown Caldwell was 11, A.R.C. Brown was 12, and Edward Brown was only 13 when they started playing school talent shows, local churches, and front yards near their hometown of Aberdeen, Mississippi, on the banks of the Tombigbee River. As was common practice among gospel acts, they named themselves after their idols: the Staple Singers. As their reputation grew, they started traveling across the Delta and the Bible Belt, piling into their family van on weekends to perform as many as three shows in a single day.

In 1975, at the time of When Do We Get Paid’s release, the Staples Jr. Singers were still just teenagers, and they sold the copies they pressed themselves at shows and on their front lawn to neighbors. With soul-inflected gospel songs that carried timely, subtle social messages, the Staples Jr. Singers responded to what they saw in the South: the struggles of the Black community, the backlash after desegregation, CivilRights.

While the Staples Jr. Singers have all gone on to write an entire catalog of gospel music since the era of When Do We Get Paid, for the original members of the band, the incantatory funk of this music still holds the power to help make a way out of dark and troubled times.

This project from Luaka Bop originates from their acclaimed compilation World Spirituality Classics 2: The Time for Peace Is Now – Gospel Music About Us (2019), which includes the Staples Jr. Singers’ single “We’ve Got a Race to Run” (Best New Music by Pitchfork (8.5), and listed among the best reissues of the year by NPR and Uncut). The compilation also resulted in the 2020 VinylFactory documentary, “The Time For Peace Is Now,” featuring Annie Brown Caldwell.
The Staples Jr. Singers Live In New York City, presented with Boom Collective:
Fri. Apr. 22 – New York, NY @ The Paris Review (press preview, invite only)
Sat. Apr. 23 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right (11am) (RSVP needed, here)
Sat. Apr. 23 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Lot Radio (3pm, live broadcast) (RSVP needed, here)
Sat. Apr. 23 – Brooklyn, NY @ Friends and Lovers (7pm) (Tickets, here)

Listen to “When Do We Get Paid” by The Staples Jr. Singers

Pre-order When Do We Get Paid Reissue

“Please Meet The Staple Jr. Singers” film

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]