‘The Capitalist Blues’, ex-Carolina Chocolate Drop Leyla McCalla’s forthcoming third album, shows a more physical, danceable side to her music.

The title track is a swinging blues and it’s easy to hear the classic New Orleans R&B in ‘Me and My Baby’ and the calypso in ‘Money Is King’.

The album also puts McCalla’s voice in a number of new contexts as the size and composition of the band behind her varies from track to track. “There’s more arrangement,” she says, so her voice stands out in the way fans of her previous albums might expect, as heard on the sparce ‘Pennha’. However, she’s clearly part of a rowdy group on ‘Me And My Baby’.

“‘The Capitalist Blues’ is comprised of songs that reflect my experience living in a capitalist society, where we are always expected to do more, be more, and have more. While many of these songs are drawn from my most personal experiences of motherhood, I also find myself questioning the myriad inequities of the world that we live in and how that juxtaposes our ideals in a democratic society. As a musician, I never imagined that ‘The Capitalist Blues’ would make me so damn happy and perhaps that represents the paradox of it all.”

‘The Capitalist Blues’ tackles the musical spectrum from New Orleans traditional jazz to Zydeco to Haitian Rara but this album is a departure from the folk approach of McCalla’s first two critically acclaimed albums, with the majority being original songs and increasingly steeped in the music of Leyla’s adopted home of New Orleans and her ancestral home of Haiti.