A recent post on social media asked about favorite albums where an artist changed their style. At first, I joked that it was Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats, before more seriously saying Tom Waits’s Swordfishtrombones. But as much as those albums represented a different direction for those artists, you can see the seeds of and continuity with their earlier work.
The same can’t be said of Zoh Zamba. Her first album, 2022’s O, Sun, is an instrumental jazz record produced by avant-garde scene legend John Zorn. Earlier this year, Amba released Eyes Full, a hard-rocking singer-songwriter album that is much closer to Neil Young’s mix of ragged, punishing noise and reflective country/folk-rick. In her recent performance at the Pearl Street Warehouse, Amba and their band played it loud and burned the house down.
When I say they played it loud, I mean. Before their opening number, Amba said they were going to “start soft.” Given what followed, I wondered if this was a joke; they did say, a bit later, “I’m kind of a comedian these days.” That comedy extends to her portrayal of their origins growing up working-class in rural Appalachian East Tennessee, where “they don’t teach you think.” It was there they took up the tenor saxophone as part of a school band program. Unable to afford lessons, they largely taught themselves, also learning to play the guitar, flute, and piano. The sax, they said, “saved my life many times,” before playing a song by John Coltrane, one of their principal influences.
Stream Eyes Full by Zoh Amba on Spotify:
Zoh Amba also noted they had only slept one hour last night, and I held my tongue rather than saying that, while I’d had a solid seven hours, my partner said I was having nightmares and wailing like a banshee through the night. They teased that another number is “my least favorite song to play, but it’s our one-hit one wonder. Just kidding, it’s not even a hit.” Then they added, “I love this song.”
As much as they might be a comedian, there’s a serious, spiritual side to them, too. They practice Advaita Vedanta, a Hindu tradition of Vedanta, and their name, which means, roughly, “mother,” was given to them on a spiritual retreat. That’s very evident in these songs, which are poignant (albeit intense) meditations on working class life, struggles, and spirituality.
The evening started with an opening set by a band from Baltimore. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch their name, and I wasn’t familiar with their songs. I did catch that they have many “songs named after rivers,” and they played one called “Patasco.” They mentioned how they’re not talking to their sister because of political disagreements, which made me recall Lilly Hiatt saying to me, “We all have family shit.” (In my case, there’s literal shit, but that’s a story for another time.) They also mentioned they’re in a David Berman tribute band and “know a ton of Silver Jews songs.”
I enjoyed the opener well enough, but Amba’s set blew me away. There are very few artists who can match their combination of intensity and heart.
