Album review: Ezra Collective - 'Here Because of Hope'
I don’t think Ezra Collective read the room wrong. I just think that particular room isn’t there anymore.
The London quintet is back with the fourth album of their young but remarkably rich career. An ascent that has so far seemed almost unstoppable, built on relentless hard work and a genuine love for music. Drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso, bassist TJ Koleoso, keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, and tenor saxophonist James Mollison have played some of the biggest stages in the world, while working alongside artists of international stature - from Jorja Smith and Fred again.. to Loyle Carner, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, and many others.
They also made history along the way, becoming the first jazz group to win both the Mercury Prize in 2023, and the BRIT Award for Group of the Year in 2025.
Not bad for a band of teenagers who met through youth clubs and specifically the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz programme, an organisation that has played a crucial role in shaping what we have come to know as the contemporary London jazz scene.
So yes, calling their new record ‘Here Because of Hope’ feels only right. It fits neatly into Ezra’s heartwarming story: one of community, possibility, perseverance, and the idea that music can still open doors that might otherwise remain closed.
This time, though, Ezra decide to raise the stakes, superimposing their own story onto that of the Black experience as a whole. They explicitly explain that “the album traces the movement of Black people across continents and decades, from the music of Africa to the rhythms of the Caribbean, and home to the streets of London”.
On paper, then, everything seems to be there. Press play and let yourself be carried away by music that brings together groove, sophistication and a concept loaded with meanings that feel more relevant than ever.
And yet, something doesn’t quite sound the way it should.
Musically speaking, the new tracks add little, if anything, to what Ezra Collective have already done. These are songs that flow easily enough without leaving much of a mark, leaning heavily on the kind of orchestration we have come to know from the band. The horn lines lack some of the melodic force they have displayed elsewhere, most notably on last year’s magnificent ‘Dance, No One’s Watching’, which remains, for me, their best album to date. Their astonishing instrumental prowess - something they have repeatedly proved capable of - is buried beneath more conventional structures, within a sound that seems increasingly aligned with the band’s new status as an almost “pop” act within the UK and global market.
Still, the record has its moments of sheer fun. ‘Only Love’ featuring Pa Salieu is a beautiful afro-jazz-rap-pop manifesto, ‘Well Organised’ with Lila Iké is a successful approach to the contemporary pop-reggae sound, while ‘Jubilee Feeling’ and ‘Black Flag’ revisit some of the dancefloor-oriented virtuoso anthems that have defined Ezra at their best.
The other major problem, however, is precisely the concept on which the album wants to stand. Attempting to tell the story of the Black diaspora in one album is an almost impossible task, and the sheer ambition of the premise inevitably weighs on the final judgement.
I say this also because of Ezra Collective’s own extraordinary story. It feels like they were among the last ones to walk through that door of possibilities. We should celebrate that. But we should also acknowledge that the door has, in many ways, closed behind them - something the band themselves have recognized repeatedly, both in interviews and on social media.
The problem is that this awareness doesn’t really make its way into the music. And that’s a shame.
I understand the need for positivity in times like these. I understand the desire to underline hope, resilience and all the things that keep people moving forward. But if the goal is to tell the story of Black people’s movement across continents and generations, it feels strange to do so almost exclusively through feel-good sentiments. There should be room for pain, struggle, setbacks and, above all, anger. Because hope is nothing without despair. Happiness doesn’t exist without sadness. These feelings are beautiful, and anger might be the most beautiful of them all. Anger is powerful. And we need it, especially now.
Yet it often feels as though we are scared of being angry.
And when I say “we”, I mean those of us who care about music, art, history, sensitivity, diversity - about all the messy, complicated things that make culture worth fighting for. We seem to be so afraid of anger that we have left it almost entirely to “others”, who have no problem claiming it as their own and wielding it without hesitation to close borders or deprive people of their rights.
That, ultimately, is what feels missing from ‘Here Because of Hope’. For a record that wants to embrace so many different traditions and countries, and for a miracle band like Ezra Collective - made up of great musicians and built around such an exemplary story - it feels like we are actually standing quite still, both musically and emotionally. As if, in trying to tell such a vast story, they ended up telling only one side of it.
3/5
