Hiatus Kaiyote – Mood Valiant (Black vinyl)

The new album has been six years in the making, but that time span reflects more hustle than hiatus. The result is an album that relaxes into a groove: sun-drenched, sublime, masterful. Behind it all is Hiatus' usual sense of musical adventure, her ability to make the complex sound simple.

The album's six-year journey originally began on the road, when they began adding new material to their live sets while on tour supporting Choose Your Weapon. By the fall of 2018, the backing tracks were mostly finished, ready for Nai's vocals. Then, during a brief tour of the US, Hiatus' frontwoman was diagnosed with breast cancer. "That was a huge scare," Nai recalls. The death of her mother, who suffered from the same disease, was on her mind. Nai rushed back to Australia and the hospital, where she underwent a life-saving mastectomy. While Nai recovered, the band turned back to their work with a changed outlook. Her lyrics, even the ones she wrote before her illness, took on a prescient quality. It wasn '

This is evident in the first single that Hiatus Kaiyote is releasing today, "Get Sun" featuring Arthur Verocai. The track was written during a session in Australia's Byron Bay, "It was really exciting and fun at the time," Perrin Moss recalls. The song took a transcontinental trip to finish. Perrin had introduced the band to the work of Brazilian arranger Arthur Verocai, whose self-titled 1970s album, Perrin says, "changed my world."

Verocai agreed to add strings and horns and asked if the band would be at the session in Rio de Janeiro. Nai Palm says, "We said, 'That would be amazing, but we could never afford it.'" The band eventually organized a mini-tour to pay for the flights, and both the schlep and the expense ended up being a spiritual, tear-jerking experience for the band - the kindness of Verocai and the alchemy of Brazil inspired them to write two more tracks for the LP in one all-night session.

"When you think your life is being taken from you, it makes you think about who you are," Nai says. "I think after the breast cancer scare, I decided I needed to prove to life that the offer I have is real. My only desire is to live and offer my experience of time and beauty."