Song Of The Day: The AbNormals — “Make Time”

This Creative Collective’s Jazz-Hip-Hop EP Is A Prime Example Of Passion, Good Collaboration And How Essential Making Art Is To The Human Spirit.

Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.

The AbNormals — “Make Time”
RIYL: the warmness you get from a glass of wine.
What else you need to know: Not quite a band, but a self-proclaimed, “collective of creatives who collectively create, creatively together.” How many times did you have to read that?

This project is a labor of love from a group of musicians, poets and creatives. Instead of having a central mind or two at its core, The AbNormals is a collaborative effort by eight Dallas artists.

Their recent EP Evergreen is a six-song journey of an honest-to-God passion for performance. The largeness of the group serves a special kind of advantage here — no two songs contain the same combination of performers, creating unique, yet unified, sounds throughout the tracklist. You get elements of soul, jazz, hip-hop and spoken word, all seamlessly woven in with each other on one super vibe-able EP.

Hearing the results of this harmonious collaboration is a treat for the ears that really makes you realize just how vital music and poetry are to the human spirit. That’s probably the biggest appeal of The AbNormals’ endeavors — it’s just so human.

Today’s particular track, “Make Time,” features Kristophe, Bria Seed, Dawun-Jamaal and Preach The Poet.

It opens up with smooth, simple guitar strums and a jazzy melody on piano, easing you into itself, nice and easy like a warm bath. The majority of the lyrics are sweet and simple, in an honest, R&B love song kind of way — The AbNormals are simply asking you to make time. It’s sung in polished harmony by its multiple vocalists, emphasizing the unity of The AbNormals.

The highlight of “Make Time” is the poetry break by Preach The Poet, his voice rhythmically speaking out a short story about a character trapped in slavery.

“The tears watered the screams to bloom silent sobs,” he says against the instrumental, “The ropes around my ankles give the bloods from my scars an obstacle course.”

Thematically, it’s unexpected in this love song, but that goes to show what kind of boldness can come from a creative collective such as this.

Header photo by Kinky K