Tongues

Saputjiji, the new album from Tanya Tagaq, opens with a series of blood-curdling screams. "Fuck war," she bellows, over and over, delivering each word with the seismic force of an Arctic cryoseism.Tagaq's paroxysm of fury is brutally cathartic — a vicious rebuke to the widespread moral apathy and cowardice of our current moment, from tepid protest songs to mealy-mouthed pleas to keep politics out of art. As missiles rain death from the sky across the Middle East, her words are a galvanizing blast of icy wind, stinging our eyes and forcing them to adjust their focus.This is, of course, completely on brand for Taqag, a multidisciplinary Inuk artist whose work has always been grounded in radical politics, and whose art has always coursed with the violent indignation of resistance to colonial evil. "Touch my children and my teeth will welcome your windpipe," she snarled on the 2022 Tongues track "Teeth Agape," a song that took aim at Canada's broken foster care system and its ongoing failure to protect Indigenous children.Tagaq reprises this role — guardian, revolutionary — on Saputjiji, which gets its title from the Inuktitut word meaning "designated protector." Produced by Sumach and Jean Martin, her seventh album is a challenging but thrilling listening experience, swinging between abrasive industrial churn and impressionistic soundscapes; frenzied wrath and maternal tenderness.Emerging from the foamy wake of "Fuck War" — on which Tagaq's guttural eruptions twist over a lurching bass line and bits of electronic detritus —  is "Razorblades," a distorted death march where her spoken-word vocals mesh with sinewy waves of throat singing. And on "Foxtrot," she goes toe-to-toe with Fucked Up vocalist Damian Abraham, exchanging screams that make your average metalcore vocalist sound like Josh Groban.Tagaq slows down for a pair of songs addressing the suicide crisis in Nunavut (suicide rates in Inuit Nunangat are five to 25 times higher than in the rest of Canada, and disproportionately impact young people, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association). "Don't go / Though I know it hurts inside," she sings on "When They Call," a slow-moving lament that builds into a crescendo reminiscent of post-rock titans Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Meanwhile, on the starkly haunting piano ballad "Exit Wound," Tagaq channels Nick Cave in her brooding but unflinching evocation of death and the hollow space it leaves behind.If these two songs offer a welcome reminder of Tagaq's talent as a songwriter and a vocalist in the conventional sense, they also clear the table for Saputjiji's more difficult second half, which occasionally descends into nightmarish territory that will test the mettle of even the most adventurous listeners; take, for example, the demented music box vibe on "Lichens," or the decaying electronic loop on "Expensive Plane Tickets," which sounds like it was sourced from a Kraftwerk record that was dipped in battery acid.And yet, even the most avant-garde songs burn bright, fuelled by Tagaq's vivid lyricism: "They say there is safety in numbers / Depends who is counting," she states on "Ikualajut," before conjuring the disturbing image of young Inuit forced to "eat [our] puke off of a residential school dining room." An indictment of colonial violence, the song is also a challenge: "A collective shift of consciousness / Is needed / Before the sunflowers burn."As with Tongues, many of the lyrics from Saputjiji are borrowed from Tagaq's 2018 book Split Tooth, an acclaimed work of magical realism that combined prose and poetry to tell the story of a young Inuk girl's upbringing and spiritual awakening. (Tagaq recently premiered a new stage production titled Split Tooth: Saputjiji at the 2026 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.) Although some fans may be disappointed by the lack of fresh lyrical material on offer here, Tagaq and her musical collaborators manage to breathe new life into these familiar words and fragments, imbuing them with the weightiness of myth.That said, Tagaq's most powerful tool remains her throat singing, a vocal approach rooted in the Inuit tradition known as katajjaq. For more than 20 years, she has worked to revitalize and reimagine the possibilities of the technique, experimenting with rhythmic patterns and melody to develop an instrument that is both visceral and emotionally stirring. A dozen years after winning the Polaris Music Prize for Animism, Tagaq continues to push katajjaq in new directions, crafting musical shapes and ideas that feel truly singular. On "Bohica," she yowls, screeches, and coos, her voice swirling in and out of the mix like a ghost. On the atmospheric closer "Imiq," she slips into a hypnotic vocal rhythm that dances like the Northern Lights, as distorted electric guitar feedback wails from below. Vibrating with anger and pain, Saputjiji is a gloved middle finger to war, genocide and the "rabid colonial systems breeding strange alien billionaires." It's also a protest album in the classic sense — one that challenges its listeners to shed their complacency, to draw a thick red line in the snow."Sound is a conduit to a realm we cannot totally comprehend," Tagaq's narrator explains in Split Tooth. "The power of sound conducts thoughts into emotions that manifest in action." Saputjiji is not an easy listen; at times, it's downright ugly. But as the empire's war machine kicks back into high gear, Tagaq's courageous offering is a much-needed wake-up call.