The amazing thing about time is that it passes. It’s not something you realize while it’s happening. But one day you turn around and you think

That’s what the Staples Jr. Singers thought and felt recording their new album 

We don’t hear records like this one anymore, because we don’t have bands like this anymore, who play shows like this anymore.

Searching

This is a record that the Staples Jr. Singers started to make in the 1980s but never finished, and then lost the tapes. And while we didn’t try to make a record with them like it would have been made in the eighties, we did try to make a record with them that referenced another time—the way their music does. In the end, all it took was recording everybody in the same room, at the same time. Can you believe almost nobody does that anymore?

For those of you who need a primer on the Staples Jrs. (no relation to that other band you’re thinking of): They are the Browns, a family of ten who came of age in the ’60s in a small rural town called Aberdeen, in northeast Mississippi between the black prairie and the pines. Back then, the South was desegregated on paper but not always in practice. Their parents found refuge and support in the church against the backdrop of an unwelcoming town (and nation), while the kids found refuge and a greater purpose in life in the music.

Every weekend, when everyone was off from work, the family would pile into their van and travel across the Bible Belt to gospel programs and talent shows in the region. Excited audiences would flock to them afterwards, telling them, “Y’all sound like the Staple Singers, y’all should call yourselves the little Staple Jr. Singers!” And so they did.

Back in 1975, the Browns got to make a single stone-cold soul record together, one which, because of its rarity, became coveted by gospel soul collectors: 

. They paid for that record themselves and pressed a few hundred copies, selling most of them on their front lawn to their neighbors. They sold all but one.

 was reissued in 2022, the Staples Jrs. — Edward Brown, R.C. Brown, and their little sister Annie Brown Caldwell, who were now all in their 60s — finally had their time in the sun: 

 named it #7 Best Album of the Year, and 

 (8/10) said that it was “music that deserves your attention.”

, the Staples Jrs.’ first album in fifty years, was recorded in a single-room church in West Point, Mississippi over two evenings, after the singers’ work days were done. The engineer Albert Di Fiore set up a remote studio in the back room of the church, and the musicians sat in a semicircle, some even on pews. Edward, Annie, and R.C. were joined by the new vanguard of their family: R.C.’s son Gary, his grandson Jaylin Brown, and Edward’s son Troy.

Time, and how it passes, was not far from anyone’s mind. Edward said, “I never thought we would get this far.” And Annie said that it was giving her the chance to look back over her life: “Some of the same songs that we sung have a new meaning to me,” she said.

It wasn’t only the band that felt that. The producer Ahmed Gallab (aka Sinkane) said of the process, “I feel like I was able to witness part of this family’s continued story and legacy in real time. That was a very special thing to witness.”

If you have some time today, take a listen to “

.” It’s a song about the power of faith that Edward sings with his son Troy. “I keep on searching,” the two generations of the Browns sing together.

. The first pressing comes with a booklet that includes photographs by Adam Wissing and notes by Anton Spice.

And if you’re reading this in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the UK, we’re very excited to tell you that the Staples Jr. Singers will soon be bringing their emotional performance to Europe! Find those dates below, with more to be announced. Get your tickets 

 and follow their amazing travels even if you’re not in Europe 

As Anton wrote in his notes, “Nothing records the passage of time quite like the human voice.”

Nothing records the passage of time like the human voice | Staples Jr. Singers’ new album SEARCHING