Mood Valiant

Hiatus Kaiyote return in 2021 with their new album Mood Valiant, on Brainfeeder Records / Ninja Tune.

The twice-Grammy-nominated band is comprised of Naomi “Nai Palm” Saalfield (guitar, vocals), Paul Bender (bass), Simon Mavin (keys), and Perrin Moss (drums) and the new album is the follow up to their 2015 album Choose Your Weapon, which Rolling Stone described as “a stunning step up” and took them from Glastonbury to Fuji Rock, from rocking the Roots Picnic to selling out the Sydney Opera House. The new project comes after being sampled on songs by The Carters (Beyonce and Jay-Z), Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Chance The Rapper, and Drake – with whom Nai Palm collaborated on his Scorpion album.

The result is an album, bookended by Verocai’s strings, that relaxes into a groove: sunlit, sublime, masterful. Behind everything is Hiatus’ familiar sense of musical adventure, their knack for making the complex sound simple, or in their own words “wondercore”. Simon’s experiment with an odd rhythm in groups of 5 becomes a cascading jam called “Rose Water.” Bender and Simon’s trading of single notes, back and forth, to make a melody becomes “All The Words We Don’t Say.” Nai’s cheeky take on sex-obsessed, three-minute pop hits becomes “Chivalry Is Not Dead,” a song about the bizarre mating rituals of leopard slugs (they turn fluorescent) and seahorses (they lock tails and dance). The album ends with the delicate “Blood and Marrow,” a Bender bassline to which Nai and Perrin improvised, that Simon pegs as his favourite: “It’s a classic Hiatus studio song that’s got beautiful exploration and mystery.”

Mood Valiant is an act of love, of courage, of altered perspective, of sister-and-brotherhood.