Zoh Amba: Maso Full review – raw, hard rock, with real love too | Music

OhOpening for OCD, Zoh Amba stopped the song and started again, searching for the right way to tell the story of a boy who was found to be “dreamin” all the time. Amba reaches the peak of a combination of compassion and intrigue (“said the mind needs a fixin’ / gunna end like everybody”), beaten and whipped, hard-hitting – the kind that causes blisters and broken cords.

These mysterious postcards from Amba’s hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee recount childhood memories with fresh eyes: he left at age 17 and returned recently, in his mid-20s. Combining realism with poetic license, Eyes Full is an experimental rock history that feels lived in, even as it represents a sudden change: Amba is best known as a free jazz saxophonist.

But the new style has the same boldness. Amba pushes their voice like they are pushing a sax – too far, because of the emotion. In Southern Soil, a tough sibling to Bright Eyes and Big Thief, Amba pleads with her family to stop keeping secrets, her voice cracking, crying, shaking.

Full Eyes couples the sound of anger and true love: Eating grass cares through the thoughts of a person who has left, the song somehow finds a heartfelt humor in the midst of depression, while the quiet Blueberry Thorn, finds a bloody spirituality, its dusty humor piercing like thorns cutting the palm of the opponent. It doesn’t matter if the recording guitar is Amba’s entrance: here-and-now, it’s a wild, beautiful thing.