Born in Montreal to a Canadian mother and a Grenadian father, Kaia Kater made her name as a banjo revivalist, much celebrated in folk circles as a teenager, though from the outset her backwoods picking came alongside songs with contemporary themes. Her previous album, 2018’s Grenades, looked at the history of her father’s homeland, since when she has become a successful TV and film composer. Now 30, Kater brings her talents into full bloom on this fourth album, which marries dazzling banjo playing with percussion, strings, brass and more – a subtle kaleidoscope of sound over which her voice floats melodically but often accusingly.
The songs are a clever mix of personal and political. Is The Witch, a sumptuous duet with Aoife O’Donovan, addressed to an ex-lover or to the historic patriarchy that persecuted women as witches? Clearly both. Fédon celebrates the leader of the 1795 uprising against British rule in Grenada, but there is room, too, for protests against the internet and, on Maker Taker, a parasitic music business. Often As the Autumn is an austere folk ballad, while History in Motion carries a Joni Mitchell imprint. It’s all “strange medicine”, whereby poisonous experience becomes a healing force, and gloriously realised.
