Album Review: Queen Esther, Gild The Black Lily

Queen Esther’s fourth studio album Gild The Black Lily, highlights the gift of being an African-American woman willing to make daring, reclamation-driven musical navigations into unexpected sonic spaces. It audaciously succeeds at crafting a narrative thread from gospel blues vocalist Blind Willie Johnson to The Eagles’ soft rock to her own heartwarming Black Americana. Notably, the album grows in distinction when Esther’s artistry expands beyond her prodigious roots and profoundly connects with the listener’s emotional core.

Before 2021, defining who Queen Esther musically was and why she was great proved difficult for critics. The reason? For generations, the gift that is Black women performing America’s foundational music was cursed by white men having significant levels of pop-aimed mainstream dominance in the space. Thus, sounds that originated in the spirit of Black American femininity in the Antebellum era grew in renown as the timeless white American experience’s embodiment. As a result, reviews of the Harlem-based Esther’s melodic yet slyly robust vocal instrument are compared to everyone from Lucinda Williams and Melissa Etheridge to Sly Stone and Sheryl Crow, or Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone. 

Thus, Queen Esther’s work would receive polite, critical acclaim in a previous environment in the not-so-distant past. However, in the present musical and socio-cultural climate, a “Black Americana” roots-rock release does as much to celebrate history as it does to provoke a nuanced cultural conversation.

The past three years have seen the United States’ latest social referendum on race and racism profoundly impacted Americana and country music spaces. Rhiannon Giddens and a talented quartet of artists successfully reclaimed the banjo’s ancestral Black history via their Our Native Daughters project. As well, Mickey Guyton has reasserted an award-nominated claim on Black excellence in country music. Plus, more artists of color are visibly super-represented and sustainably thriving in roots, country, folk, and Americana than ever before. 

Under this metaphorical microscope, this recording becomes an important creation occupying unprecedented space.

The choices of covering Blind Willie Johnson’s iconic 90-year-old gospel-blues tune “John The Revelator,” and The Eagles’ 45-year-old straightforward, easy rocker “Take It To The Limit,” plus throwing in an original song that melds a century of pleasant folksy pop tropes like “The Whiskey Wouldn't Let Me Pray” (plus songs from a diverse crew of artists including the Chip Robinson of The Backsliders, George Jones, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Son House) would appear to set an evident intention for Gild The Black Lily. 

However, gut-bucket, fire and brimstone soul is not Queen Esther, nor her all-star band of players’ calling card. Thus, the combination of refined artistry with material typically reserved for rollicking entertainment requires initially shifting one’s sonic expectation. However, upon doing so, the album is a beautiful musical journey into the craft of artful exploration.

The album’s most profoundly impacting work is “Oleander,” a melancholy country ballad crafted by her own hand and first sang via her own voice. Her vocal is best as a malleable instrument that stretches and contorts through and around rhythms and measures. Boo Reiner’s note-perfect, hillbilly-esque mandolin trills excel in setting the stage for Esther’s voice to amplify the emotional depth of her yearning accurately. 

Even deeper, a song like “This Yearning Thing” dramatically benefits from highlighting Queen Esther’s well-seasoned gifts as a singer. Ascending and descending octave scales, plus using one’s voice like a metronome, are classic vocal tricks. It’s the type of thing -- like Whitney Houston staying a beat behind the orchestra until she soars far beyond their octaves and volume on her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” -- that allows for a great vocalist to define themselves on a track uniquely.

As for the cover songs, the take on The Eagles’ “Take It To The Limit” -- in including stirring work from Greg Lewis on the organ -- intriguingly infuses a sound that typically recalls much of the faux folk religiosity of The Band circa The Last Waltz. However, Queen Esther is a Black, Southern-born artist equally as schooled in the enigmatic mysteries as she is the ecstatic brilliance of African-American music history. Her musical essence finally presents the honesty and truth of a song that, for many years, was a charming, comfortable sing-along favorite in an Eagles discography chock full of gentrified soul.

Albums like Queen Esther’s GIld The Black Lily celebrate Black women magnificently sustaining their success in nurturing American art rescued from white enslavement. Bold reclamations like these deserve an immediate listen and our most appreciative ear.

GIld The Black Lily was released March 26, 2021.
Listen to it here