Letters from a Black Widow

Albumbeschreibung

Fans of Judith Hill will immediately understand the reference in Letters from a Black Widow's title. It's the epithet she was saddled with after the death of mentor and collaborator Prince, after working with and losing Michael Jackson to the same fate. She reclaims the phrase used by an online mob and transforms it into a mantra of power. Hill's newfound use of the electric guitar, an instrument she taught herself to play after Baby, I'm Hollywood, symbolizes that power. She is backed by her parents, Michiko Hill on keyboards, Robert Lee Hill on bass, drummer/percussionist John Staten, Daniel Chae on various stringed instruments, and a host of friends on backing vocals.
Opener "One of the Bad Ones" offers a majestic piano, flute, fingerpicked guitar, and strings. Hill recounts a psychedelic healing experience; the tune elongates, fragments, and splinters into crackling angular funk-rock. Her lyric addresses an unmovable inner mountain of negative emotions: self-doubt, confusion, and pain. Her solution is not to fight, but to accept their presence as threads in her life's fabric, along with joy, pleasure, and love. The bluesy guitar rock in the single "Flame" builds on the lyric resolve of the previous track, as Hill's protagonist not only stands tall but swaggers amid life's chaos as a rumbling B-3 doubles the bassline for momentum.
"We Are the Power" prefaces the title track with bubbling drum funk, wah-wah guitar, and a melody that underscores her apprenticeship at Paisley Park as her sensual multi-tracked vocal soars over the backing singers' in a fingerpopping chorus.
"Black Widow" is a theatrical ballad that suggests the influence of Nina Simone -- a master at transforming hate. An ominous piano introduces Hill's harrowing lyric, reflecting on the burden the epithet imposed from outside. She turns that perception inside-out amid electronically treated chorus vocals and swirling strings. Following a badass guitar solo, Hill accepts the entire journey as a transformational growth experience that strengthened her spirit. Single "Dame de la Lumière" is a musical love letter to her mother and grandmother, and an empowering tribute to women delivered in a gorgeous chamber jazz vernacular that touches on gospel and pop. Hill's phrasing is elastic, seamless, and carries the emotional truth, creating new meaning when taken with the previous two cuts.
"Let Me Be Your Mother" is a mutant blues with stellar interlocking interplay between upright bass, plucked violin, spiky electric guitar, and Afro-Latin percussion before it gently mutates into neo-soul. Her 2023 single "Runaway Train" is rave-up, revue-style soul with an anthemic chorus, soaring Wurlitzer electric piano, and a Hammond B-3 buoyed by the swaggering rhythm section. Hill's lyric details her life as a musician with its struggles, blessings, love, and heartbreak, and she says yes to it all. Letters from a Black Widow is a cathartic album. Exceptional in its writing and production, this is a mature statement of an artist who knows her worth, expresses empathy, practices acceptance, and embraces possibility.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo