Album Review: Nahko And Medicine For The People - 'Take Your Power Back'
‘Take Your Power Back’ is a wondrous album. It’s powerful, emotional, and so heart-wrenchingly uplifting that it’s hard to find anything to fault; an harmonious patch of wonder in an otherwise bleak world.
Nahko, born to a Native American mother and Puerto Rican father, has conquered the world. Through a blend of feel-good love and infectiously good hooks, Nahko and his band Medicine For The People have had sold out shows and festival appearances across the world, bringing with them a sense of unassuming, life-affirming humbleness that make them a true joy both to listen to and watch. Yet Nahko and Medicine for the People, aside from being one of the most energetic and simply ‘smiley’ bands to ever grace the stage, and aside from being almost saccharinely feel-good to the extent that even the most gut-punchingly powerful topics become soulful and warming bangers, are an amazing band. They blend insanely good harmonies with socially conscious folk, rock, and anything else that helps make their sound all the more perfect, and this latest album is no different, except perhaps taking it to a new extreme. Their fourth album, ‘Take Your Power Back’, is a testament to humanity’s resilience, as the album transports you through a meandering field of grief and heartbreak. Yet, rather than surrendering, the songs do just what they promise — rather than wallowing, they take the power back by confronting the issues head on: finding yourself, owning yourself and your problems and living through them.
The album is a little more produced than the albums preceding it; the album possesses a dazzling ray of styles and influences that, despite perhaps seeming eclectically chaotic, makes perfect sense. There’s Dear Brother, for instance, featuring environmental activist Xiuhtezcatl: opening with strings, piano and stirringly haunting singing from Nahko, it quickly transitions into drum tracks and ferociously angry hip hop. ‘Dear Brother’ alone seems like three songs blended into the one. Yet its simply amazing because of it. Standing in stark contract to this is title track Take Your Power Back, a jazzy, rocky affair more reminiscent of The Heavy‘s recent work than of Nahko’s, full of call and response, funky sax and soul-jiving funk; the two seem inherently dichotomous. Add to this various poetry readings and you’ve got yourself an interesting album that somehow stays superb throughout. Each song — or other — on the album is beautifully unexpected and different from the one before, yet each and every one is linked by a sense of candid awareness. However, rather than bemoaning the state of the world, they offer hope.
Honor the Earth, named after a Native-led cause established to restore the territories of Native communities, is exactly that. Hope. For one, its insanely catchy, blending horns with electronic drum beats and Nahko’s distinct vocals. Yet it’s the lyrics, reflecting man’s inherent need to recognise, reflect on and reconnect with Nature, that makes the song so sublime; asking us to look ahead to what will be left when we die.
Album opener ‘Fourth Door’, approaches this from the other side; rather than what will be left after we die, the song explores how anyone could possibly deal with what’s left when someone else does. Featuring Joseph’s Natalie Closner Schepman, the guitar is almost twinkling as the song slowly embraces us, stars looking down on Earth, and the harmonies are celestially haunting.
The two that follow, ‘Lifeguard’ and ‘Slow Down’ examine the future at a more personal level. Lifeguard, meaning quite literally guarding life, asks what we stand for and how taking more than we need only hurts us, as well as everyone around us, while on ‘Slow Down’ Nahko shows the need for self care, to slow down and rest: the mind, body and spirit needing equal attention moving forward.
The album isn’t solely looking ahead, however. Interspersed with the musings of the future are snippets of the past: Direcciones Taino, delivered by Nahko’s uncle in the Taino language, or ‘Defend The Sacred’, a welcome chant delivered in Ilocano and translated by Nahko, exemplify the honesty of the album, harking back to Nahko’s roots, and ground the album in a centre of peace and truth.
It’s on song Give It All however that the album takes on its own, as Nahko asks what a perfect world would look like and asks who would be willing to give it all to achieve it. It’s the outro though that makes it so strikingly powerful, as Nahko and Shailene Woodley joke about in the sunshine, with birds fluttering around them and the sound of the ocean lapping at the shore.
“We’ll make stories, we’ll make love and that’s enough.” Ultimately, what more could anyone ever want?
On Take Your Power Back, Nahko really does give it all.
Words by James O’Sullivan