Gone are the bamboo earrings, dollar-bill pendants and fist-pounding swagger of her 1989 hit “Buffalo Stance,” though otherwise not much has changed. Sitting in a cafe in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, in cargo pants, lace-up boots and a hand-knit sweater, her hair falling in dark ringlets around her glowing, wrinkle-free face, Neneh Cherry could pass for any young hipster in the hood. But she’s not.
This month, the now Stockholm resident turns 50. Yet she’s lost none of her edge: On Feb. 24, Cherry’s releasing “Blank Project” on SmallTown Supersound, her first album in 16 years, a relentlessly rhythmic mashup of beats, beat poetry, soul and rap that rocks like metal and thumps like an EDM record without actually being one.
“It’s the fastest album I’ve ever recorded,” Cherry says of the 10-track CD produced by Four Tet, aka Kieran Hebden, the acclaimed electronica beatmaker. “We recorded all 10 tracks in five days in a studio in Woodstock [N.Y.] last summer. There’s something to letting go and getting it out.”
Brothers Ben and Tom Page of RocketNumberNine served as her backing band, pounding away on live drums, keyboard, bass and percussion. But Cherry says Hebden kept the arrangements sparse, with her voice and lyrics upfront. “Every record I’ve ever made you go into the studio and layer, but this was the opposite. Kieran kept stripping away until I felt half-naked.”
If you haven’t been paying attention, it could seem as if Cherry’s been absent from the music scene during the past quarter-century. But through the years she’s appeared on recordings with Gorillaz, African singer Youssou N’Dour, Cher and Eric Clapton. In 2012, she worked with Scandinavian jazz trio the Thing to release “The Cherry Thing,” a tribute to her late father, jazz great Don Cherry. All that’s in addition to raising three kids — ranging in age from 17 to 34 — becoming a grandmother and moving from New York to London to Sweden, where she was born and where her mother, who died four years ago, was from.
“Processing my mother’s death, my life and its ironies, my fears and the things you just can’t control — all this fueled my record,” she says.
First single “Out of the Black,” featuring Swedish pop star Robyn, is a sultry dance track about fate and longing that arrives this month. And the title track is a mature meditation on marriage and its ups and downs. “When you’ve been with someone for 28 years, there are things that drive you crazy,” she says with a smile.
All told, the album, in sound and emotion, is rawer than “Raw Like Sushi,” her hit debut, which peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard 200, where it spent 25 weeks in 1989. “I can’t just redo ‘Buffalo Stance,'” she says, “but I love performing it.”
That’s good news for die-hard fans, who’ll get a chance to see her live when she embarks on her first solo U.S. tour this spring. But don’t expect a nostalgia show. “As an artist, you have to keep pushing forward,” Cherry says.
“It’s no victory lap,” says Second Empire’s Dan Mackta, the album’s U.S. product manager. “Neneh’s an older woman for this market. At the same time, there’s a young, fresh aspect to the music on this album. Recording with Four Tet is going to open her up to a whole new generation who probably weren’t even born when ‘Buffalo Stance’ came out.”
Mackta says “Blank Project” is already getting early interest from radio, citing noncommercial KCRW Los Angeles and NPR, for which she’s taped a “Studio 360” segment that will air closer to the album’s release. The single will be worked at triple A, noncommercial and alternative-specialty radio.
As for Cherry, she’s up for the challenge of hitting the road and reintroducing her work to the United States and a new generation. “Working with Four Tet has made me quite fearless,” she says. “It just feels like the right time.”