AHI – In Our Time
22nd Sentry/Thirty Tigers – 10 August 2018
Possessed of a warm gravelly soulful folk rasp reminiscent of Rag’n’Bone Man or Paulo Nutini (or for the obscurantists Jimmy Stevens), pronounced ‘eye’, AHI is actually an acronym for the Ontario-born singer’s full name, Ahkinoah Habah Izarh, and In Our Time is the follow-up to his digitally released 2017 debut We Made It Through The Wreckage. It is suffused with a similar optimistic and positive vibe with home as the anchor of hope.
That’s clear from the outset with the thumping beat of Breakin’ Ground (which in some ways, both musically and in its sentiment, reminds me of Albert Hammond’s Free Electric Band) as he opens with the line “I’ve been told I’m worthless/So much that it gave me purpose” and how he “ thought all doors were broken/’Til I found one I could open“, declaring “I know I’m gonna make it out/Cause I’m already breakin’ ground”, presumably a reference to the acclaim that greeted his debut.
Likewise, the strident beat of Straight Ahead serves a reminder to keep your eyes fixed on the prize (“put your blinders on and look straight ahead“) and not fall by the wayside in the path of temptations that “lead you to perdition.”
Reining the sound in slightly to a more basic acoustic guitar approach, Made It Home underlines the importance of home in giving fortitude when the road ahead seems lost (“this old house may one day fall apart/But it made us who we are”), again reemphasising the need to fix a goal and stick with it (“You gotta set your eyes on something you believe is true/It don’t matter the cost”).
If this all sounds like a series of inspirational life lesson mottos, that doesn’t undermine their truth or importance, and the swelling musical arrangements in which they’re couched, only serve to bolster the emotions they stir.
Hope and salvation can come in the form of love, as in the vaguely Springsteen-like The Architect’s Hand with its construction imagery and the simple organ-backed strum of On My Side. Or in faith, as in the spare, violin-accompanied folk blues Just Pray with its powerful narrative of a child conflicted between the love for his father and the domestic abuse he witnesses (“When you can’t do nothing then you gotta just pray“).
Built upon a repeated acoustic guitar pattern and descending chords, before it opens up into a fluttering kick beat rhythm, Five Butterflies is an autobiographical number about starting out in married life, the titular insects seen from a window, “dancin’ like windchimes”, becoming a symbol of making it out of digs and building a family.
Such personal songs are balanced with numbers that address wider social issues. With its wordless choral chorus and anthemic swell, We Want Enough embraces the bigger picture of the have-nots striving for a fair deal and to build a future (“we ain’t asking much, we don’t want it all, we just want enough”) while, departing from the dominant approach for a skittering, nervy rhythm, In Our Time paints a very particular picture of unrest as he sings
When we woke up this mornin’, could tell the world had changed
We were clingin’ to each other through the gas and the acid rain
S.W.A.T. standin’ like a wall, they were there to intimidate
And the masses all fled as they broke through the barricade
It’s hard not to think of the current racial and political divisions tearing America apart in the last stand call to arms encompassed in
I’ve seen all my heroes let down
I never tried to pick a side, I said we’d always have to fight
It hardly crossed my mind I could be right.
After all this, it surprisingly ends on a downbeat note with the bluesy rock n roll shuffle of post-relationship lament Penny with its reflection on how you don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lost it, but, ultimately, as with his debut, the album sees the light at the end of a long tunnel. Let it shine on you.
UK Tour Dates (with The Lone Below)
31/08 | Summerhall, Edinburgh
01/09 | Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
02/09 | Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
03/09 | Omeara, London
05/09 | The Horn, St Alban’s
06/09 | The Phoenix, Exeter
07/09 | Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Photo Credit: Jess Baumung