For the Canadian-American soul-jazz collective Busty and the Bass, collaboration has always been at the forefront of their music. Formed at McGill University in Montreal over a decade ago, the group is now scattered across four North American cities from coast to coast. Yet, with a collaborative spirit at the heart of their third studio album, Forever Never Cares, the members have never been more connected.
Over the years, the group has collaborated with legendary artists George Clinton, Macy Gray, Earth Wind & Fire, Slum Village, and exciting new voices like Polaris Music Prize winners Cadence Weapon and Pierre Kwenders. Most recently, the group dropped a mini-album with Philadelphia poet and rapper STS. Despite such a strong history of partnerships, Forever Never Cares reshaped the band’s creative formula and redefined how they worked together a decade into their career.
After a founding member and primary songwriter left the band in 2022, the collective used the opportunity to re-approach their creative process for the first time in years. Songs would be brought to the group from individual members or smaller formations of two or three members writing together. Interestingly, more voices involved in the songwriting resulted in the group’s most refined output to date.
Two previous studio albums, Uncommon Good (2017) and Eddie (2020), saw the band experiment with genres effortlessly changing styles song to song, from soul to funk to pop. Forever Never Cares finds the collective both broadening and distilling their influences into a unified sound that is entirely their own. This is due in large part to founding member Christopher Vincent who engineered and mixed the album. Vincent found a sonic language that would compliment all of the disparate genres being stacked atop one another.
With soul and R&B as the album’s cornerstone, the record is sprinkled with cross-genre explorations. From the indie rock-inflected uptempo singles “All The Things I Couldn’t Say To You” and “Wandering Lies,” to slow-burn ballads like “Give Me A Smile” and “Never Get Enough,” to the celebratory pop-funk of “Starstruck” and “No Angels,” a touch of 70s singer-songwriter on “Smoke and the Pine” and “Holiday Drive,” and the psychedelic jazz explorations of “Far From Here” and “No Self Control” featuring saxophonist Terrace Martin, a frequent collaborator of Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper.
The album sounds, at once, of a bygone era and completely modern, featuring dynamic live performances, expansive arrangements, and a wide array of vocal approaches including the heartfelt expressiveness of founding member Alistair Blu, the otherworldly falsetto of Jordan Brown, the smokey soul of Katie Tupper, the power of Son Little, and the playfulness of Magi Merlin. The moment you think you know which direction the album is going, it takes another unexpected turn, but you are always delighted by the eventual destination.
“Forever Never Cares is a gentle reminder to let go of attachment,” explains vocalist Alistar Blu. “The album is about leaving behind the small things in life that we obsess over. It’s about embracing uncertainty.”
And for a group of musicians entering a period of change, it’s a testament to their creative connection that they were able to produce their most cohesive and adventurous album to date.
“This album is the culmination of 10 years as a band,” says Christopher Vincent. “All the ups and downs, members coming and going. But it’s also a crystallization of what we’ve been trying to achieve for years.”
