A new album by incarcerated musicians features songs of prison, trauma and hope

The brand new album, that includes the group Tenneson assembled, begins with the startling sound of a standard chant carried out by two incarcerated Native Individuals, Phillip Archuleta and Gilbert Pacheco. The document proceeds from there in a mode its creators confer with as “prog-Americana,” a dreamlike sound tapestry that, whereas it definitely holds collectively as an album, also can really feel like a bracingly bizarre, electrifying and uncooked combine tape. Structurally, the songs are daring — mixtures of balladry, hip-hop, nation, soul and blues reside, in some instances, inside a single music — and are flavored with devices as numerous as organ, flute and alto sax. Lyrically, these songs wrestle with the private and systemic trauma of the marginalized — racism, crack dependancy, sexual abuse and mass incarceration — but persistently the phrases are buoyed by hope for redemption.