Groundation - Candle Burning

Candle Burning is Groundation's eleventh album, and it recruits four generations of reggae legends to help carry a message of hope rather than struggle.

The band recorded this album live to analog tape at ICP Studios in Brussels over the course of a single immersive ten-day session, the kind of constraint that tends to produce records with real cohesion rather than pieced-together perfection. And it shows. Alpha Blondy, Mutabaruka, Thomas Mapfumo and Mykal Rose all appear, an unlikely and truly moving cross-section of West African, Caribbean and Jamaican reggae lineage sharing space with a California band who have spent decades earning the right to stand alongside them.

Energy opens the record exactly where the title suggests, with the horns and rhythm section coming together quickly. The title track spans over six minutes, the album's clearest spiritual statement, patient and unhurried, as Groundation knows so well. Keeper of the Flame carries real weight in less than four minutes, direct and unadorned, and Anew closes the record on a note of renewal rather than resolution, befitting an album more interested in vitality than lament.

Nine titles, four guest legends, a group that continues to prove that it belongs in this company rather than just rubbing shoulders with it.