Being quarantined in Trinidad hasn’t been half bad for Kes. The soca outfit spend so much of their year off-island touring that, for them, long stays at home could usually only mean that it’s Trinidad Carnival season — “go time” for soca music.
Marooned on the island with their instruments and, for once, idle time, the band decided to bring the stage to the studio, and create a ‘live’ album called We Home. The project, recorded at Port of Spain’s Kin Sound Studios earlier this summer, finds the quartet revisiting some of their most familiar songs — tunes like “Hello,” “Savannah Grass” and “Fallin.” These new versions sound less like the ones that play in fetes and on the road, and more like the live versions that the band has developed and perfected during its annual road runs.
For the first release off the album, they revisited “Magic,” a 2020 Carnival release with Jimmy October and Etienne Charles. Reconnecting with the genre’s roots in calypso has been a persistent theme in soca music in recent years. On the new version, Kes and the band bring the track even further.