Fudge.

A once wedding band, turned super-star backing group now independently brave the global stages of R&B, Funk and Soul fusion with their self-titled debut album "Free Nationals". After propelling the career of Anderson .Paak in 2016 with his breakthrough album "Malibu", the band have seamlessly coat-tailed their way to a place of appreciable fame. A now indisputable fact by virtue of the lengthy star-studded guest list - Daniel Caesar, Syd and Mac Miller to name a few - that makes this album prestige if nothing else.

Inspired by the likes of Bootsy Collins, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Parliament-Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dog and Erykah Badu, the Free Nationals have put their name on the line in attempting to adeptly eulogise these great names. They certainly have the talent and cohesion to pull it off but that's only half the job. Now, although the album has been labelled "a compilation record" by NME's Sam Moore, "hampered by a lack of imagination" by Sheldon Pearce of Pitchfork, I'm here to tell you that, although there is certainly a smattering of truth in these reviews, I believe Free Nationals has an immutable quality achieved by the very reason it has been criticised for; the carte blanche of being leaderless. 

I often credit an album on its sequential ability to invoke something more than just its constituent tracks, however "Free Nationals" doesn't have any sort of linear musical narrative to it and instead jumps haphazardly from place to place. Be that as it may, I feel there is a different and maybe more explicit narrative behind this album. Imagine jumping in the Free Nationals' 1980s Lincoln Town Car, cruising around summertime LA, stopping in different places to pick up their mates along the way and hearing the variety of stories they have to tell. The Free Nationals don't feel like headliners here, even with keyboardist T.Nava's Peter Frampton-esque talk box vocals featuring throughout the album, they absolutely rely on the presence of a frontman personality. The beauty of .Paak's absence (other than his ever-smooth feature in "Gidget") is that each guest seems to take the wheel of creative direction, bringing their own style and genre to exact a refashion for each track. All the while, the Free Nationals act as the four wheels on the reliable Lincoln Town Car, as facilitators for the journey through each neighbourhood and the change in genre that comes with each stop along the way.

The most exquisite karaoke night you could ever dream up, the Free Nationals impeccably bring together a hugely diverse group of artists into one album, endorsing their place as one of the best backing bands there is. You'd be a fool or a veritable Funk & Soul pedant not to enjoy Free Nationals even a little bit.

Written by Angus Bates

(Cover image copyright: Free Nationals. Captured by Tom's One Hour Photo Lab.)