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‘Wherever he sends us, we’re willing to go’: Annie and the Caldwells on God, gospel and a debut album 40 years in the making
Fearing pop would lead them to the devil, Annie Caldwell recruited her daughters into her band. They’re now sending audiences into ecstasy with disco-tinged soul gospelFrom West Point, MississippiRecommended if you like The Harlem Gospel Travelers, DJ Greg Belson’s Divine Disco compilationsUp next Single, Wrong, on 28 January. As-yet untitled debut album to followOn Instagram, you can find a clip of Annie and the Caldwells’ recent appearance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht: one of the band’s first performances outside America’s deep south. The Dutch festival is admirably eclectic and boundary-pushing – the bill this year ranged from Japanese noise-rockers Bo Ningen re-imagining the soundtrack of Jodorowsky’s 1973 surrealist classic The Holy Mountain to the self-styled “putrid, drug-filled gutter rock” of New York quintet Couch Slut – but even so, Annie and the Caldwells’ appearance looks extraordinary: a mother and her three middle-aged daughters, clad in matchin...