COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile Matana Roberts

"Roberts' voice on the horn has become much calmer on the COIN COIN albums than on earlier discs like The Chicago Project or Live In London; the roar of her alto has been tempered by a subtle, murmuring introspection and a deep sense of the blues. Trumpeter Jason Palmer shadows her with cautious, complementary lines throughout, and on 'Responsory', the 11th section of the piece, they transition seamlessly from sputtering freestyle playing into a passage of heartfelt New Orleans-style blues. Everyone performs thoughtfully and sympathetically, working towards the larger goal... Roberts is in control of her music and the story she wants to tell - the next chapter can't come soon enough." – The Wire (cover feature)

"Roberts is a meticulous and comprehensive composer, but this music ricochets with the intensity of free jazz and dives smoothly into Sunday afternoon sessions. Mississippi Moonchile boasts impeccable melodies and excoriating variations, cantering rhythms, and debilitating breakdowns." – Pitchfork (8.1)

"The piece has evolved since she first began performing it in 2006, but its core remains intact, its power undiminished… Her agile ensemble play the album as an unbroken continuum, one track flowing into the next. The sanctified combustion of Albert Ayler informs this music, but its mood can also run beguilingly cool, as when a sauntering blues emerges out of scrabbling tumult on a track called 'Responsory.'" – New York Times

"[A] stunning avant-jazz tapestry... The way Roberts mixes experimentalism with song-form — and with post-rock prepared guitar (on the first volume) or operatic vocals (on this edition) — makes for that rare balance of 'accessible' and 'innovative'." – SPIN

"Mississippi Moonchile is the second in a projected twelve-album cycle entitled COIN COIN. And throughout the project thus far, Roberts has used her music as a medium through which to explore the liminal zones between lore and history that define the ways in which we understand ourselves in the present. Primarily interrogating her own sense of identity as an African American woman, Roberts calls upon numerous other voices – from her family's history, her culture's mythology – to create not historical documents but living artifacts of collective cultural memory: simultaneously disorienting and exhilarating in their chaotic multiplicity." – The Quietus

"The music is a sung/spoken testimony to endurance and survival, and the family bonds that play a role in overcoming intolerable barriers... [It] begs to be heard from start to finish. Hopefully, this chapter is just the middle part to an ongoing saga." – All About Jazz

"[Roberts is] carving out her own aesthetic space, one that's startling in its originality and gripping in its historic and social power." – Chicago Reader

"Perhaps the most stunning feature of saxophonist Matana Roberts’ new work, the second installment of a work-in-progress, is that the music seems constantly reborn. Improvisation, composed sections, instrumental riffs and much more burst forth from an uninterrupted panorama and describe a journey that evokes a history rich with all matters of experience and emotion. Though written for sextet, the sensation is of something larger and the scope suggests a multitude of performers playing, singing, chanting and declaiming. Roberts has written a seamless, 18-part composition that gives eloquent shape to, among other things, the notions that music is a positive way to express the vicissitudes of history." – New York City Jazz Record

"The record can be elusive, something Roberts in part acknowledges in frequently returning to the phrase, 'There's some things I can't tell you about, honey,' through the album's vivid second half. She's speaking in her grandmother's voice, but the notion also reflects trying to put this spellbinding album into words. It just needs to be heard." – LA Times

"Even in its relative gentleness, Mississippi Moonchile asks more provocative questions than its predecessor. It joins with it to become part of a coded memorial quilt that critically examines the racist design of 'official' history, even as the latter deceptively evolves and sublimates its origins in the present era." – All Music Guide

"While the work takes on the feel of a stream of consciousness narrative, make no mistake: this is a composed, disciplined work. The inclusion of sections of operatic vocals by tenor Jeremiah Abiah and vocals by Roberts and her ensemble provide a rich, essential counterpoint to the abstraction of the instrumentals. This release is more focused than the first COIN COIN effort, representing a maturation of Roberts' conceptual arc." – Exclaim!

"This is music of an exceptionally strong character." – The Arts Desk