After teasing it earlier this month with the announcement of a double album release show with Abigail Lapell, Kaïa Kater has shared the details of her fifth album, Strange Medicine, which is arriving May 17 on Acronym Records.
Strange Medicine features collaborations with Allison Russell, Aoife O’Donovan and Taj Mahal. Today, we get to hear that Taj Mahal collab in lead single “Fédon,” which Kater says she released in honour of Black History Month. In a statement, she explained:
This song centers around a late 18th century Grenadian revolutionary, Julien Fédon, who began an armed insurrection against the British Colonists and plantation owners in Grenada. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, Fédon’s army was composed of many enslaved Black Grenadians and mixed race free Black people. Though the rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, I wanted to channel the meticulous planning and electric energy that must have been travelling through the island the night of the first attack. I was overjoyed that Taj Mahal agreed to sing on this, as he is an icon in folk music and has brought Caribbean influences to so many of his works. He’s also an incredible person and a personal hero of mine.
Produced by Kater and Joe Grass, Strange Medicine is Kater’s first new album in six years and the follow-up to 2018’s Grenades. It features previously released single “The Internet.”
“The through line for me is just stories. It was the story of my dad on Grenades, and on Strange Medicine it’s the story of people in history who might not have had their proper shrift,” Kater said of the album. “It’s also my chance to finally write about the times in my life when I didn’t feel like I had a voice, in order to give myself one now.”
Check out “Fédon” and the Strange Medicine tracklist below.
Strange Medicine:
1. The Witch (feat. Aoife O’Donovan)
2. Maker Taker
3. Mechanics of the Mind
4. In Montreal (feat. Allison Russell)
5. The Internet
6. Fédon (feat. Taj Mahal)
7. Floodlights
8. Often as the Autumn
9. History in Motion
10. Tigers