Yahoo News Arooj Aftab Follows Grammy-Winning ‘Vulture Prince’ With the Haunting, Gorgeous ‘Night Reign’: Album Review
Arooj Aftab’s dusky and sonorous voice — not to mention the Arabic and Asian-inflected melodies in her songs, which are sung in Urdu and English — tend to make people think she’s playing a form of traditional music. But in reality, it’s an innovative fusion of genres that is reflected in the variety of Grammy nominations she’s received: most are in “global” categories — one of which she won in 2022, for her song “Mohabbat” — but also best new artist and even alternative jazz. Aftab was born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents and raised primarily in Pakistan, but has been based in New York for the past several years, and those far-reaching but unusually complementary influences and others combine to make for a sound that’s as unusual as it is natural-sounding.
Her music is often not as weighty as it might seem: As she said in 2022 during a breathtaking performance in a perfect setting — at the Temple of Dendur at New York’s Metropolitan Museum — “People think these songs are serious, but most of them are about being intoxicated and completely failing at love.”
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While her previous album, “Vulture Prince,” garnered her mountains of rapturous press as well as the Grammy, its dark, hushed moods and melancholy melodies became all the more vivid when the listener became aware that the album was inspired by the death of Aftab’s brother.
Her latest — and her major-label debut since signing with Universal’s Verve imprint — is also often low-key, but the mood is much brighter and more hopeful than on “Vulture Prince,” with several songs seemingly about the pleasure and surprise of a new romance. While a lot of the songs are hushed and moody, three outliers shake up the flow. A major highlight is “Bolo Na,” an interpretation of a traditional TK Urdu TK song with a gorgeously sinuous melody that is driven by a hulking, ominous bassline and soft but persistent brushstrokes on a snare drum. Her voice soars all over the melody but a twist comes in the form of a spoken-word passage, in English, from spoken-word poet Moor Mother.
Alternately, the gorgeous “Raat Ki Rani” could be a late-period Sade song (and features a Tessa Thompson-directed video), and “Whiskey,” which is about exactly what it seems like it would be about, features lyrics that could be from a country song; there’s also a beautiful take on the standard “Autumn Leaves” and some gorgeously stacked harmonies on “Saaqi.”
Of course, the centerpiece of it all is Aftab’s astonishing singing, which can swell or diminish with remarkable agility as she sings often-complex melodies following tricky, fluid scales.
With a wide range of collaborators — Cautious Clay, Chocolate Genius (aka Marc Anthony Thompson, Tessa’s father), pianist Vijay Iyer and longtime accompanists Petros Klampanis on bass, harpist Maeve Gilchrist and keyboardist James Francies — “Night Reign,” contrary to its title, is a brighter but no less beautiful take on Aftab’s music.
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