2025 · Album
Oh Snap
Nonesuch Records · Released: September 19, 2025 · Studio Album Number: Eighth
Four Years Alone, Then the Band Arrived
She spent four years experimenting with computer sounds and her own compositions before inviting anyone else into the room.
Oh Snap arrived in September 2025 as Cécile McLorin Salvant's eighth studio album, and it landed with measured interest rather than immediate fanfare. The Metacritic aggregate score of 71 from four critics reflected what the record actually was: a solid, interesting departure that didn't universally convince but earned respect for its ambition. This wasn't the kind of album that grabbed everyone at once. It was the kind that people had to sit with.
What made it different was the process behind it. Salvant spent four years working on these songs entirely alone, experimenting for the first time with computer-generated sounds and building original material that drew from pop, folk, and electronic music alongside her classical training and jazz foundation. Only after those four years did she bring her band in to complete the work. That long solitude shows. The Guardian's John Fordham noted that her visual art practice seemed to have liberated her for this step, letting her take risks she hadn't taken before. The result was twelve originals plus one cover that blended those grungy pop and intimate folk influences in ways her earlier records hadn't explored.
The album didn't explode into the conversation, but it didn't need to. For listeners willing to follow Salvant into territory that wasn't purely jazz, that mixed electronic textures with her distinctive voice and songwriting voice, it offered something genuine. It was a record that required you to meet it halfway, and for the people who did, it delivered the thing Salvant had clearly spent those four years chasing.
Where next?
More by Cécile McLorin Salvant
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