Arooj Aftab came on to most people’s radar with her third solo album, Vulture Prince, in 2021. Marrying elements of experimental jazz and traditional folk music from her native Pakistan with the sort of urbane pop that the likes of Sade and Enya concoct, the result was a plaintive and evocative exploration of her attempt to deal with the death of her younger brother.
That album’s success and the Grammy it won her generated significant pressure around a follow-up album so Aftab took a time out to form a trio with the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and the multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. And in 2023 they released their Love In Exile album.
Iyer and Ismaily reappear here on her fourth solo album, Night Reign, where they’re joined by Gyan Riley, son of minimalist pioneer Terry, the harpist Maeve Gilchrist and Elvis Costello, who makes a cameo on, improbably, the Wurlitzer.
Initially, the album was going to focus exclusively on setting the poetry of Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, the first woman to publish poetry in Urdu, to music. But in the end, just two of the album’s tracks are set to Bai’s words. And instead, she wisely decides to open the album up to give it a broader, more cosmopolitan hue.
So that, even more so than with her previous album, Night Reign moves with ease from English into Urdu and back, and back and forth between the worlds of jazz, pop and traditional Pakistani folk music.
What’s so satisfying about the experience of listening to the album is the sense you get of its ‘unity of composition’, which Aftab achieves thanks to her dual roles as vocalist and producer. The 20 years and more she’s spent perfecting her craft in both guises allows her to meld those potentially disparate worlds and fuse them together into an organic and captivating whole.
Night Reign exudes apparently effortless poise and is an album you can enjoy equally in the intimate privacy of your headphones, or on repeat, for hours, on in the background.
The boys from Pitchfork gave it an 8.3 here
Watch the video for Raat Ki Rani here:
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