British jazz band Ezra Collective’s follow-up to their Mercury Prize-winning album is another joyous celebratory collection.
British group Ezra Collective has had one of the most impressive rises to stardom of recent years, reaching a level of success long-believed impossible for a jazz band. They won the 2023 Mercury Prize, one of the most prestigious UK music awards, for their 2022 album ‘Where I’m Meant to Be’ – the first time it had ever been awarded to a jazz album.
At the time, drummer and band leader Femi Koleoso said: “Let me thank god because, if a jazz band winning the Mercury Prize doesn’t make you believe in god, I don’t know what will.”
Since then, Ezra Collective’s popularity has swelled and the band are currently on their biggest tour yet, culminating at Wembley Arena, the first time a jazz act will headline the huge venue.
Anyone who’s heard ‘Where I’m Meant to Be’ will understand why. Ezra Collective used their second album to patch together a multitude of genre forms, from jazz to jungle, to create a selection of immediate and exciting danceable tunes that also deconstructed the experience of being a Black Briton.
With their third album ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, the group continue to tread their now established path of high energy jazz-influenced tunes but take time to jam out with more traditional jazz album sensibilities.
Album opener ‘Intro’ has the band slowly build in volume over a cacophony of audience chatter. Over the course of the album, audience interaction occasionally interjects as a display of the group’s inimitable success as a live act.
Once the band is in full swing, the group’s knack for jazzy-earworms is as apparent as ever. ‘The Herald’ shows off Ezra Collective’s most powerful asset, its brass section’s capability to create hooky melodies that are so catchy, you’d almost mistake them for a pop group.
Ife Ogunjobi’s trumpet and James Mollison’s tenor saxophone riff off each other, calling and responding, before coming together in symphony to create Ezra Collective’s trademark party atmosphere. All the while, they are backed effortlessly by Koleoso driving percussion and Joe Armon-Jones various synthesiser textures.
Second single ‘God Gave Me Feet For Dancing’ is the first song to elevate the band from fun dance-worthy jams to a fully-fledged pop classic. Vocals from Yazmin Lacey combined with Armon-Jones’ smooth piano chords give the song a sensual tone that gives way to the brass section’s all-out dance floor cacophony.
Later on, rising star Olivia Dean features on the similar ‘No One’s Watching Me’, bringing out the band’s sensibility to luxuriate in a more relaxed jam mode. These moments show up more on this album than the previous one, although on songs like ‘N29’ which doesn’t feature a guest vocalist, the jams can feel unfocused and without catharsis.
Throughout ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, the general theme is that when the band goes into party mode, they are as enticing as ever. But the section of slower tunes, allowing the band to settle into elongated jams, while pleasant enough, rarely present anything as exciting musically. Ezra Collective’s super power is in making jazz appeal to pop sensibilities, but tracks like ‘Why I Smile’ skirt a bit too close to the endless YouTube “lo-fi jazz to study to” playlists designed more as background muzak than actual art.
It never goes that far off the edge though and these tracks are a minor quibble in an overall exciting album that deftly jumps through genres, such as Afrobeat and funk, to deliver expansive bustling tracks like ‘Expensive’.
‘Dance, No One’s Watching’ most often feels like a celebration right up to closing track ‘Everybody’. It’s a celebration of Ezra Collective’s meteoric rise, of the ability for jazz to break through, and most importantly – in the ears of any listener. As a victory lap album post-Mercury Prize win, this album doesn’t feel as #important – it doesn’t feature Steve McQueen bigging up their cultural power, for example – but it cements the group’s ability to carve out joyous melodies and rhythms to fill dance floors for years to come.
Ezra Collective’s ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’ is out 27 September.
