To Bring You My Love (Huh review)

"Great gods cannot ride little horses," goes the old proverb in Haiti, whose pantheon of voodoo gods and goddesses 'mount' the initiate's body at the crossroads of heaven and hell. Charging out of the desert on 'To Bring You My Love,' nostrils flaring like some wild mustang, Harvey proves herself worthy of bearing the mightiest of gods through the white darkness of possession. Washed in the blood of the Lamb and Ghede's jism, baptized by Satan in Ogoun's fire, she's a voodoo priestess speaking in tongues older than the blues itself. And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Again and again the levee breaks, as her ever-mutating voice short-circuits the electroshock storm of 'Meet Za Monster's "big black monsoon"; claws its way above 'Long Snake Moaning's dizzying pool of distortion, where she hoodoos the hoodoo man; and croons a girlish prayer when she drowns her own "blue-eyed whore" of a daughter 'Down By The Water.' Again and again her organ laps the shores of salvation, reminding us we're in church. "Don't you know yet who I am?" she asks somewhere along the desolate highway of 'Working For the Man's junkie nod. Any doubts are dispelled by her whinnies and neighs in 'The Dancer,' as a black-clad god "bathed in splendor and glory" comes "riding fast" on her flanks "like a Phoenix on a fireflame." Drink this up with a bottle of Barbancourt Rhum.

Rating: 10

Cree McCree

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