Rev. Sekou featuring Luther and Cody Dickinson - In Times Like These

The cover of In Times Like These, by Rev. Sekou, tells you a lot. A sharp dressed black dude wearing a three-piece whistle and a trilby with the brim pulled down over his eyes is walking along between two railway tracks, an acoustic guitar grasped in his mitt by the neck.  That’ll be the Reverend, I’m thinking.  And underneath the title it says ‘Feat. Luther And Cody Dickinson’.  Now, contributions by the North Mississippi Allstar brothers may not be a guarantee of quality, but they’re a pretty good recommendation.

And when it gets going with opening track ‘Resist’, it sounds like they’re onto a good one.  A

Like I said, whipping up a storm live.

civil rights sermon-style call to arms gives way to a hot-gospelling slice of soul, with organ, piano and horns, underpins an anthemic chorus of ‘We want freedom and we want it now’, with Luther Dickinson adding a few fills along the way.  You get the picture?

The way the title track barrels along is a reminder that Ray Charles built his soul sound on church music, with the Rev hollering away in fine fashion about the need for a miracle, but reflecting that ‘Ain’t nobody gonna save us, we’re the ones we’re waiting for’.

I imagine that the Reverend Osaguefo Uhuru Sekou can whip up quite a storm performing this stuff live, and there’s plenty of passion on display as the album progresses.  But he’s articulate with it too, with his liner notes about ‘The Task of the Artist in the Time of Monsters’ underlining the urgency of the lyrics.

The playing is top quality too, as you might expect with the Dickinsons on board.  I might have suggested that Luther Dickinson was doing sterling work on slide, but evidently he has some serious competition here from lap steel whizz AJ Ghent.  In any event there’s sublime playing decorating the likes of ‘Muddy And Rough’ and the jazzed-up gospel evident in the second half of ‘The Devil Finds Work’, with more rousing horns and Hammond B3 from former Al Green sideman Rev. Charles Hodges.

Things flag a little towards the end, with a couple of songs like the ‘Problems’ that melodically are more R Kelly than Ray Charles, but that’s enlivened by the rootsy playing, and in particular by some zinging guitar which I suspect is Dickinson’s handiwork.

Rev. Sekou is a guy with blues in his veins, but more than that he has a message, and boy does he want to get it across.

Rev. Sekou plays at the Black Deer Festival in Sussex on 23 June.