Meshell Ndegeocello has brought Bill Callahan and Chris Thile in on With God on Our Side, the Bob Dylan protest song, and released it as the latest piece of her collaborative album Synonym. Damani Baker directed the accompanying video, which was shot on a park bench and puts the three singers in the plainest possible setting.
Ndegeocello explained her choice of voices in a press release. "Bill Callahan's voice to me is enchanting and just draws you in," she said, before turning to Thile: she called him a grounded person and said she loves the earthiness of his voice. The two are an odd pairing on paper, a Drag City singer-songwriter and a mandolin player out of bluegrass, and the arrangement uses the contrast rather than smoothing it out.
Her own reading of the song is that it should hit harder than the folk original does. Ndegeocello says the arrangement gives the lyrics a lot more aggression, and describes the work of rearranging as assembling a puzzle out of small pieces, a process she frames as a way of giving the song more respect rather than less.
Synonym is out on 2 October, which the stored version of this story did not have. The guest list around it is long: Chaka Khan, Brandi Carlile, Moses Sumney and Anohni all appear, alongside Cat Power, who sang on the Human League cover Ndegeocello released last month.
That Cat Power track was the last preview before this one, and we covered both the announcement and the song itself in the Human League cover and the reggae-leaning duet that came with it. Chris Thile has his own December run booked, which we wrote up in the Wassail shows with Aoife O'Donovan.
Taken together the previews sketch what Synonym is: a rnb-soul bandleader picking singers from outside her own lane and rebuilding songs around them, rather than a features record built for playlists. Its October date is listed on the release calendar.
The facts
- Meshell Ndegeocello, Bill Callahan and Chris Thile sing With God on Our Side.
- The track comes from Ndegeocello's duets album Synonym.
- Synonym is released on 2 October.
- Damani Baker directed the video, shot on a park bench.
- Ndegeocello says the arrangement gives the lyrics more aggression.
- Chaka Khan, Brandi Carlile, Moses Sumney and Anohni also appear.
- Cat Power sang on last month's Human League cover from the album.
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