Ezra Collective want you dance to their new album. Hardly surprising if you’ve ever listened to them before – whether it was in 2019 when they dropped their first album as rising stars of the UK jazz underground, or in 2023, when they won the Mercury Prize. They know what they’re good at: thumping, gyrating dancefloor music, built on a pacy undercurrent of upbeat jazz grooves. But now, they’re making an explicit demand: ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, drummer Femi Koleoso says, is an album giving you the freedom to “be who you want to be” and not let “someone else steal your joy”.
On their third album, the five-piece pivot their style of jazz into hard funk, dub, neo-soul, Afrobeat and highlife. Lead single ‘Ajala’ is an ode to the latter two genres, its irresistible energy keeping you moving to the spirit of moped adventurer Olabisi Ajala. The tight stabs and strong horn lines here feature across the album, from the marching, joyous ‘Hear My Cry’ to the Fela Kuti vibes of ‘Expensive’. You know this record will sound even better live (especially at OVO Arena Wembley, when they become the first UK jazz act to play there in November).
But the dance vibe does move from borderline moshable to more groove-led. ‘God Gave Me Feet For Dancing’ dials down to a cushioning, neo-soul vibe as Yazmin Lacey pleads for “bassline, highlife, dolla wine, [and] good times”, while ‘Streets is Calling’, a collaboration with M.anifest and Moonchild Sanelly about feeling that pre-party hype, channels dubbed-out funk.
The group hit up Abbey Road Studios to record the album just days before becoming the first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize – a crowning moment for the group, who met in 2012 through the youth club and jazz development programme Tomorrow’s Warriors. The only sign, perhaps, of newfound stardom on ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’ (they saw a 859 per cent increase in combined sales and streams post-Mercury) is the voice note from beloved Arsenal football legend Ian Wright on the Latin-influenced ‘Shaking Body’.
Ezra Collective prove less is more with the late-night jazz-funk track and Enfield night bus tribute ‘N29’. Olivia Dean follows that with stunning vocals on ‘No One’s Watching Me’. More development of the strings with the band in ‘Acts 1-4’ would have been welcome to turn them into more than just interludes, but the final three tracks really show how Ezra Collective don’t always rely on the frenetic to get you moving. ‘Have Patience’ sees a beautiful piano solo from Joe-Armon Jones that builds into the euphoric, celebratory ‘Everybody’ that exudes the positive community spirit Ezra Collective champion in their music.
Koleoso told NME last month if you give them “Paul McCartney money, we’ll build a youth club”. The group want to bring communities together and “pass that baton” of music onto the next generation, just how they were encouraged growing up by their mentors at Tomorrow’s Warriors. Ezra Collective deliver on the excellent ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, bringing people back together on the dancefloor.
