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[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text module_class=”article-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”||||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#111111″ header_font_size=”68px” custom_margin=”40px||||false|false” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”intro-text” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center” custom_padding=”||0px|||” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Voice of the civil rights movement continues to stir the soul with one of the best albums of her triumphant second act.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/11\/Mavis-Staples_Sad-And-Beatiful-World.jpg” title_text=”Mavis-Staples_Sad-And-Beatiful-World” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Mavis Staples – Sad And Beautiful World<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n ANTI-<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n In a career that began 75 years ago, pre-dating even Alan Freed\u2019s adoption of the phrase \u2018rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u2019, Mavis Staples must have thought she\u2019d seen just about everything; one of the most recognisable voices of the United States\u2019 struggle for civil rights, she continued singing on the side of the righteous as the search for equality dragged on.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Now 86, she should be taking it easy, assured her wars have been won. Yet, here we are in 2025, and the last member standing of The Staple Singers is dusting off her old friend\u00a0Curtis Mayfield<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u2019s We Got To Have Peace, her work incomplete as long as the world continues to promote leaders too dumb to understand the message.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Staples\u2019 solo career took a while to get going: two albums for Volt while the family group was signed to Stax were followed by irregular releases, overseen by Mayfield, Jerry Wexler or\u00a0Prince<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>, but it wasn\u2019t until 2004 that\u00a0Have A Little Faith<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0ignited the second act. Having paid for the recordings herself, she used countless rejections as fuel until being picked up by the Chicago blues specialist Alligator Records. Three years later and signed to Anti-,\u00a0We\u2019ll Never Turn Back<\/em>\u00a0set the template for the next two decades: Staples; a trusty lieutenant \u2013 Ry Cooder, initially \u2013 marshalling the material and musicians; songs, whether new, recent or traditional, that she could imbue with undiminished authority.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n That powerful combination remains in place for her fourteenth studio album, with Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Nathaniel Rateliff) stepping into a producer\u2019s seat previously occupied by Ben Harper and\u00a0Jeff Tweedy<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and helping her pick songs that tell both her story and the stories she needs to tell. Cook\u2019s contacts book came in handy, but all on a lengthy list of much younger contributors \u2013 which includes Katie Crutchfield, Justin Vernon, Rateliff and MJ Lenderman \u2013 share a knack for keeping out of sight, leaving the focus on Staples.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Solo and as part of gospel\u2019s first family, Staples has always used her faith as a light, believing any darkness today will eventually yield to a brighter, everlasting future.\u00a0\u2028Facing forward, then, she uses the past as a lesson to be learnt from rather than as some golden era worth revisiting. That\u2019s spelt out on the opening track, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan\u2019s Chicago, which follows a broken farmer moving in search of a better life. Though Mavis was born in Illinois, her father, Pops, grew up on a Mississippi cotton plantation before joining the exodus to the industrial north in the 1930s. \u201cThings will be better in Chicago,\u201d she hopes on the album\u2019s toughest cut, duelling guitars provided by Derek Trucks and the 89-year-old Buddy Guy, who made a similar journey in the 1950s.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Autobiography weaves around social conscience throughout, as befits a singer who has stood on the front line for 60-plus years. Kevin Morby\u2019s Beautiful Strangers, originally issued as a fundraiser for charities advocating gun control, contains asides about terrorist attacks in Paris and Florida and\u00a0\u2028deaths in police custody, which gain further gravitas coming from someone who knew Martin Luther King Jr, the man who advised the Staples to add message songs to their gospel set list. Or, as Morby put it: \u201cYou\u2019ve got a sweet voice, child, why don\u2019t you use it?\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Human Mind, written for Staples by Hozier and Allison Russell, digs yet deeper. Singing of \u201cburning hillsides, children dying by machines of war\u201d, she reaches out to both her father \u2013 \u201cI deal in loss, Daddy\/I am the last, Daddy, last of us\u201d \u2013 and the Father: \u201cFind a reason, Lord, to keep on trying.\u201d We\u2019re left to hope she uncovers answers but the lack of closure doesn\u2019t detract from a remarkable lyric \u2013 Mavis confesses to being moved to tears when she sang it the first time \u2013 that is delivered as a Muscle Shoals-style crescendo, with all the weight and the pain and the glory of eight and a bit decades bearing down on the singer.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Similarly, her reading of Anthem makes Leonard Cohen\u2019s hymn to resilience and resistance feel like a bespoke gift from another writer who knew about life in the shadows. As Staples watches 2025 unfold, with growing authoritarianism, increasingly random violence, needless deaths and the grip tightening around the throat of democracy, she reaches not for retribution but for the hope that we will be able to start anew tomorrow. \u201cThere is a crack,\u201d she sings, her voice underlining that observation. \u201cThat\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n It\u2019s as that distant flickering light, illuminating the path to better times, that Staples excels. \u201cHard times,\u201d she says, taking as her mantra the high point of\u00a0Gillian Welch<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>\u2019s\u00a0The Harrow & The Harvest<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/strong>, \u201cain\u2019t gonna rule my mind.\u201d Though it\u2019s hard to believe Staples\u00a0\u2028would have comprehended the demons the writer grappled with, when she brings that power to\u00a0Mark Linkous<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>\u2019s Sad And Beautiful World \u2013 \u201cSometimes days just go speeding past\/Sometimes this one seems like the last\u201d \u2013 you know she would have been there in the darkness to hold his hand.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n After comforting those in pain, however, Staples finally points the finger with a song as old as her career. Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes\u2019 Satisfied Mind would be well known to her \u2013 Mahalia Jackson had sung it in 1954,\u00a0Bob Dylan<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0had messed about with it\u00a0in The Band\u2019s basement 13 years later \u2013 but its message has yet to reach the one-percenters trying to claw back what little the rest\u00a0\u2028of the planet has. She treats it as a hymn, its simple arrangement evoking a Salvation Army band in the background\u2026 not that any\u00a0\u2028of its targets will care.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Her generation may be fading away, but Staples is not the last to know empathy, nor \u2013 despite her concerns \u2013 will she be the\u2028\u201clast of us\u201d. There\u2019s enough strength in that powerhouse voice to suggest there are more albums to come, but her message to us is\u00a0\u2028that there\u2019s no time to waste, we need to do the right thing today. Don\u2019t just hope things will work out, be more like Mavis.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Sad And Beautiful World is out November 7 on Anti-.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n ORDER:\u00a0<\/span>Amazon<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>|\u00a0<\/span>Rough Trade<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>|\u00a0<\/span>HMV<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n 1. Chicago<\/span> [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voice of the civil rights movement continues to stir the soul with one of the best albums of her triumphant second act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3525,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/3525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}“There is a crack. That\u2019s how the light gets in.”<\/h2>\n
Mavis Staples<\/h3>\n
Tracklisting:<\/strong><\/h1>\n
2. Beautiful Strangers<\/span>
3. Sad And Beautiful World\u00a0<\/span>
4. Human Mind\u00a0<\/span>
5. Hard Times<\/span>
6. Godspeed<\/span>
7. We Got To Have Peace<\/span>
8. Satisfied Mind\u00a0<\/span>
9. Anthem\u00a0<\/span>
10. Everybody Needs Love<\/span><\/p>\n