Following Allison Russells GRAMMY-nominated debut album Outside Child (2021), The Returner is a body-shaking, mind-expanding, soulful expression of Black liberation, Black love, of Black self-respect. Written and co-produced by Allison along with Dim Star (her partner JT Nero and his brother Drew Lindsay), The Returner was recorded over Solstice week in December 2022 at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, and features an astounding all-female musical collective Allison dubbed The Rainbow Coalition.

Breaking free from Outside Childs acoustic-based contours, Allison, JT, and Drew, built The Returner from the bottom up. The rhythm-first, genre-fluid approach and the improvisational energy of great female artists, sparked the albums fierce joy and provided a wider canvas for Allisons immense, unlimited talent.

Artist quote: My goal with The Returner sonically, poetically, and spiritually is a radical reclamation of the present tense, a real time union of body, mind, and soul. A goal that is more daunting than any of the improbable escapes I sang of in Outside Child.

Where the last album was deliberately stark in its color palette and iconography, The Returner is furiously coloristic and vivid a contrast reflected equally in the sonic differences of the new album. Leaning into various groove evolutions cultivated by the African Diaspora over the last century and a half in North America, its a much deeper articulation of rhythm, groove, and syncopation. Groove as it heralds the self back into the body, groove as it celebrates sensual and sexual agency and flowering, groove as an urgent call to action and political activism.

In all, the new album doesnt just deliver on the massive promise of the last two years, it brilliantly exceeds all reasonable (and unreasonable) expectations and affirms Allison Russells place among musics most vital artists and The Returner, as one of 2023s most essential recordings.