Letter 20 - Chicken Soul for the Soup
Various -soul music prefixes
As northern hemisphere Spring has finally arrived, Summer is within touching distance, and I can literally feel the Seasonal affective disorder leaving my body, I find myself craving music that warms my soul in the same way the sun warms my skin.
Every year around this time I embark on a quest find the common ground between gospel-soul singers inspired by a higher power, and the heavenly ascension I experience when drinking cans in a park with my pals.
On the presumption this much needed change in weather has left you seeking out a similar feeling, I’ve written about three gospel-, disco- and neo-soul albums released in 2025.
As always, I have curated playlists you can listen to while you read - Apple Music - Spotify.
If you missed any of my previous letters, or want to find some other music or films, you can find them in The Odhracle Archive.
Please like & subscribe, share with anyone who would enjoy, and let me know what you think of any of the recommendations in the comments below.
Much love, Odhrán x
Gospel-Disco-Psychedelic-Neo-Southern-Soul
I’ve linked to each record’s Bandcamp page below where available, and you can listen to a playlist of the songs I’ve discussed in this Letter on Apple Music and Spotify.
Annie & The Caldwells - Can’t Lose My (Soul) (2025)
Genre(s): Disco-soul & Gospel-soul.
For fans of: Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack & The Gap Band.
Songs to try: Wrong, I Made It & Can’t Lose My Soul.
In 1975, in the deep, segregated south of the United States, in the the tiny hamlet of Aberdeen, Mississippi, three teenage siblings - Annie, Edward and R.C. Brown - recorded a gospel album as the “Staples Jr Singers” called When Do We Get Paid. The trio made 500 copies of the album, and sold them after performances in the front yard of their parent’s house. Once the 500 copies sold out they didn’t press any more, nor did they record more music as a group - when speaking to The Guardian in 2022 Edward said “Gospel was something we sang because we love to praise the Lord. Not some kind of show business.”
Annie and her brothers went on with their lives, and in all likelihood that should have been the end of the story, and although I’m not a man of faith myself, I can’t help but feel that it’s a minor miracle it isn’t.
In 2019 Greg Belson, an LA-based British DJ known for crate digging obscure gospel and soul records, came across a 7” single that the Staples Jr Singers had recorded in 1974. Belson wanted to include the song on a compilation of rare gospel songs he was putting together for Luaka Bop, a New York-based record label founded by the Talking Heads’ David Byrne.
Luaka Bop went to great lengths to find the siblings and get their permission to include the single on the compilation. They worked out that Annie Brown had gotten married, and was now Annie Caldwell, and label president Yale Evlev called the 7 Annie Caldwells listed in the Mississippi phonebook trying to find the right one. Always in the last place you look, at the 7th attempt, in another Mississippi hamlet called West Point, the right Annie picked up the phone just before it rang out.
After some incredulity, Luaka Bop convinced the siblings to fly from Mississippi to New York to perform, to allow them to include the single on Belson’s compilation (The Time for Peace Is Now (2019)), and ultimately in 2022, to reissue the Staples Jr Singers’ 1975 album to critical success.
Annie and the Caldwells, the focus of this letter, is the band Annie formed with her husband and guitarist Willie in the late 1980s. Today the band consists of Annie on lead vocals, Willie on guitar, their daughters Deborah and Anjessica and goddaughter Toni on backing vocals, and their sons Willie Jr. and Abel on bass and drums. For the next 4 decades, the family band played in churches across Mississippi and recorded a handful of demos alongside their day jobs. It wasn’t until the success of the 2022 reissue did Luaka Bop successfully convince Annie and her family to record their debut album, Can’t Lose My (Soul).
The album sets its stall out immediately on opening track Wrong across an all-too-brief 2 and a half minutes, with a disco bassline, gospel clapping, soulful harmonies and the powerhouse Deborah on lead vocals confessing about past marital sins. Brevity however is no problem on the title track which clocks in at 10 minutes - a smooth gospel-soul call-and-response song which highlights the beautifully weathered vocals of Annie.
The catchiest song on the 6-track album is the disco groover I Made It, with the daughters singing an interpolation of The Gap Band’s 1982 classic You Dropped a Bomb on Me. But rather than The Gap Band singing about being blown away by a girl, the Caldwell’s version is about narrowly missing the explosive fires of Satan.
On a more down-tempo number, penultimate track I’m Going to Rise has a psychedelic bassline so laid back it’s stretched out on a church pew, and album closer Dear Lord is a great representation of the familial harmony achieved by the troupe, with its deep gospel funk sound.
Annie and the Caldwells recorded Can’t Lose My (Soul) in their church in West Point, not 25 minutes down the road from where Annie recorded When Do We Get Paid with her brothers almost 50 years earlier. Given its miraculous genesis, we can thank God it’s not just good, but one of the best albums that will be released in the year of our Lord 2025 (ok I’ll stop).
If you liked this, listen to the Staple Jr. Singers’ When Do We Get Paid (1975) (2022 Reissue) and Luaka Bop’s compilation The Time for Peace Is Now - Gospel Music About Us.
Greentea Peng - TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY (2025)
Genre(s): Neo-soul & Psychedelic R&B.
For fans of: Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill & Yaya Bey.
Songs to try: One Foot, Green & TARDIS (hardest).
Greentea Peng (real name Aria Wells) is a south London girl who seems to reside on a slightly different plane of existence than the rest of us. She has always worn her artistic and spiritual vision on her sleeve (or on her skin, as it were, in her many tattoos and piercings). Wells combines the countercultural aesthetics of 60s hippies, 70s punks and psychedelic-shamanic Mexico.
Her unique sound, which she describes as “psychedelic R&B”, is too a complex mix of styles derived from different cultural melting pots. It’s this sonic crossover that Greentea Peng has taken to a new level on her second studio album Tell Dem It’s Sunny. The instrumentals pivot from psychedelic basslines, to 90s trip-hop, to US R&B, to dub beats, and to quintessentially London broken beat drums, some times providing a soft bed for her buttery soulful vocals, and at others times underpinning her UK hip-hop style rapping.
The album, which details a story of self-growth and change, follows her sprawling debut album Man Made (2021), and her mixtape Greenzone 108 (2022), and comes after an extended break following the birth of her daughter in 2022. Wells chose to give birth at home, without doctors or painkillers - she points to this experience as the turning point in her life which led to this album. In an interview with Dazed she said “‘It had quite a profound effect on me,’ Peng recalls. ‘I realised that actually I could do anything I fucking want to do, and no one can really tell me otherwise.’ Her daughter’s babbling is featured on the two skits which bookend the album.
Where Man Made was a fairly political album, and Greenzone 108 explored mysticism and spiritualism, Tell Dem It’s Sunny is introspective and soul-bearing - a public telling of her journey of healing, commencing from the birth of her daughter, and ultimately leading to a place of happiness.
On TARDIS (hardest), Greentea raps about the effort, drive and self-belief required to grow as a person - “There are no insecure masters // No Successful half-hearters”. On One Foot her complex lyricism hits on similar thematic beats - over early ‘00s west coast hip-hop production, Wells talks about the journey of moving towards a new self - “One foot front and back again … I’m learning to serve my friend” and the hardship involved “These treacherous oceans // I’m fucking exhausted // Messed up, distorted // My shit ain’t sorted”, questioning whether God has deserted her.
The centrepiece of the album is the partially eponymous Green, which marks the midway point in this transformative process. It opens with her wordless vocals over laidback ‘90s trip-hop and R&B production, with overt influence from neo-soul queen Erykah Badu, and Lauryn Hill’s work with the Fugees. She speaks to herself in present tense, laying bare the core theme of the album - “Come over and in, and let the healing begin // That’s how we solve business when shedding one’s skin”. She makes it clear that at this point, the journey incomplete, and that only she can change who she is - “And give over, stop waiting for clovers and miracles // Ain’t no one delivering except from you … The growth so far has been exceptional // but there’s still a lot to do, a lot to face // A lot to learn, a lot to change, a lot to take.”
She then tells a well-crafted story over the next 5 tracks. On Raw and Stones Throw the instrumentals maintain a throwback R&B vibe, but now with a '00s UK-bent. Her lyrics on both songs are critical of their addressee, and at first seem to be directed at a former lover, but I think are actually (at least partially) targeted at a fading version of herself, to whom she pleads - “I wanna hear it all, tell me all my faults”.
Leaving the soulful R&B sound behind, Wells takes a more defiant tone on the subsequent pair The End (Peace) and Whatcha Mean, over up-tempo DnB & Jungle production. On the former, she embraces the end of that period of her life she had now grown past, and on the latter, she challenges her past-self to show her what they’re made of.
This part of the story reaches a conclusion on penultimate track I AM (Reborn). Over a hard rock guitar riff, in stark contrast to her pleading on Stones Throw, Greentea triumphantly rebukes her past self for not appreciating how she has changed - “I am not who I was yesterday // Don’t act like you know me // I am not how I was yesterday … so how can you know me?” Still, she acknowledges the journey isn’t over - “This the situation, I gotta keep it moving … This is spiritual migration … Release me from this prison // Pre-ordained analysation.”
It’s a brilliantly constructed record, with top tier production and Wells demonstrating her technical skill and sonic dexterity throughout. I think the timing of when she flips from US-influenced neo-soul and R&B, to UK bass music production, is very well done, and the album is a great demonstration of her growth not just as a person, but as an artist.
If you liked this, listen to Erykah Badu’s neo-soul classic Mama’s Gun (2000) and neo-soul newcomer Yaya Bey’s Remember Your North Star (2022).
Sault - 10 (2025)
Genre(s): Gospel-soul, R&B & Funk.
For fans of: Cleo Sol, Solange & Yazmin Lacey.
Songs to try: T.H., L.U. & W.A.L.
The 12th studio album from not-so-anonymous soul & R&B group Sault - the creative outlet of husband & wife producer & singer duo Inflo & Cleo Sol.
As with each Sault record, 10 features contributions from core Sault members in reggae artist Chronixx, Jungle and Jack Peñate. Alongside them are renowned bassists Pino Palladino & Rick James, string section The Wire Strings, reggae group Top Brass, and various familiar faces from the London jazz and soul scenes, like Dave Okumu & NIJI.
10’s release was a little noisier than we are used to with Sault. It was teased via a series of Instagram reels (a departure from their typical shadow-dropping approach), released on Spotify a day early, subsequently pulled, and then reuploaded with the track titles converted into acronyms. It also comes with the backdrop of press coverage of a legal dispute between Inflo and Little Simz in relation Sault’s sole live show to date.
So I had a little trepidation on hitting play on this one, worried this noise would drown out the quality I now expect from each Sault release, or that it was was an indication of a dip in the high standards Sault have set themselves. However, as soon as the bassline and flute on opening track T.H. (The Healing) are joined by Cleo Sol’s vocals, any concerns were washed away by the warm waters of her dulcet tones.
As a music nerd, I’m often asked who my favourite artist is, and I often answer Cleo Sol. Now, like most people who spend all day listening to music, my answer to that question changes depending on what the last gig I went to was, the weather that day, or what I had for breakfast. So whilst I do frequently name her, I can’t say for certain it’s actually the right answer. But what I am completely 100% certain of is that she is, by a country mile, my favourite vocalist.
I draw such comfort from being wrapped in the warm embrace of her voice - listening to her singing has been a soothing balm to tough times and rough days in my life. Inflo’s ability to harness the smoothness and clarity of his wife’s voice as an instrument, and using it as part of Sault’s soulful arrangements, is consistently my favourite aspect of their albums. Cleo sings lead vocals throughout 10, and it’s probably the most Cleo-heavy album they’ve released so far.
On T.H., I love how the synth keys joust with her voice at times, and compliment her pitch at others. On second track R.L. (Real Love), the deep bassline, restrained horn section and distant keys allow her voice to obtain an almost heavenly quality, before pivoting to a jazzier sound when Inflo layers her vocals and harmonies on top of each other .
Cleo’s music has become increasingly spiritual over time, and in a rare interview with Zane Lowe last year she discussed how her faith and music intersect. Although she was discussing a solo single in that interview, and has sang about her faith prior to now, this album represents her most significant step towards a clearly defined gospel-soul sound. The album’s standout track in this vein is L.U. (Look Up), on which she reassures the listener that they are not alone, and that God is with them. This reassuring tone is a common feature in Cleo’s music, and the main theme in my two favourite songs of hers - Know That You Are Loved & Things Will Get Better.
This focus on faith is a thematic continuation from Acts of Faith (2024) and Untitled (God) (2022), but feels far removed from Sault’s first five studio albums released between 2019 and 2021, which primarily dealt with themes like police brutality and the black experience.
The thematic focus, the fact that Cleo’s and Inflo’s are the only vocals on the record, and that the album features various musicians who also appear on Cleo’s solo work, can make 10 feel like an uptempo Cleo Sol album with a Sault-inflection, rather than a distinct Sault project. There are some exceptions - like penultimate track W.A.L. (We Are Living), with its funky bassline, Inflo’s hand drums and Cleo’s almost childlike vocals, sounding lifted from one of Sault’s earlier albums.
As always, it’s difficult to know where Sault will go from here. There’s been rumours of more live shows, and Cleo’s been performing rare solo shows in the US for the past couple of months. We also know legendary rapper-turned-flautist Andre 3000 has indicated he has a forthcoming collaboration with Sault, and frequent collaborators Michael Kinwanuka and rapper Kid Sister are absent from this record. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear a lot more from Sault in the near future.
If you liked this, listen to Sault’s album Untitled (Rise) (2020) and Cleo Sol’s album Gold (2023).