Ezra Collective’s “swirl of genres”(NPR Music) lands today w/ new LP ‘Here Because of Hope’

Ezra Collective, one of the most vital and ascendant bands in British music, release their extraordinary fourth studio album Here Because of Hope via Partisan Records. Their most ambitious and personal record yet, the album arrives as the London quintet reaches a remarkable new peak: Mercury Prize winners, BRIT Award winners, UK Top 10 artists and Wembley Arena headliners who have taken the communal joy of their earliest youth club sessions and carried it onto some of the world’s biggest stages.

That momentum has only intensified. Rolling Stone UK just put the five-piece on its cover, declaring Ezra Collective “one of Britain’s biggest bands” and describing Here Because of Hope as their “most ambitious chapter yet.” Across town, The Guardian handed bandleader Femi Koleoso the reins of its Saturday magazine Culture section for an expansive eight-page takeover, exploring the people, places and ideas that shaped Ezra’s world and the hopeful philosophy at the heart of the new album. Elton John has gone even further, calling them “the best live band in Britain.”

But Here Because of Hope is more than the record meeting Ezra Collective’s biggest moment. It is the clearest expression yet of what has made them such a singular force.

Conceived in three spiritual and geographical movements, the album traces the movement of Black people, music and culture from West Africa, across the Caribbean and ultimately home to the streets of London. Along the way, Ezra Collective ask a deceptively simple question: why does so much Black music born out of profound pain sound so joyful?

Their answer is hope: the belief, carried across generations and oceans, that circumstances can change, that something better remains possible, and that rhythm itself can become a form of release.

The album begins in Africa, drawing from Afrobeat and the sounds and traditions of the continent before moving across the Atlantic into its Caribbean movement, where reggae, dub, salsa and the musical language of the diaspora come into focus. Its final chapter lands in Britain, where those histories collide with UK jazz, broken beat, funky house, grime and the sprawling musical ecosystem of London that raised the band. As Rolling Stone UK writes, the journey mirrors Ezra Collective’s own histories, bringing together Nigerian heritage, Jamaican roots and the musical collision of growing up in London.

Across the album, Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis and Libianca help give voice to those different movements, while acclaimed actor Letitia Wright guides listeners through the record with spoken-word introductions.

Among the album’s most kinetic moments is release-day focus track “El Corazón,” which brings the full heat of salsa into Ezra Collective’s world. Driven by conga patterns, bursts of brass and the irresistible pull of the clave, the track expands the album’s Caribbean movement beyond reggae and dub to celebrate the musical traditions of the Latin Caribbean. For bassist TJ Koleoso, making space for salsa was an important part of the album’s broader mission. “I don’t think the UK understands salsa that much,” says TJ Koleoso. “We wanted to show that a song like that can be a real thing — that it can mean something beyond novelty.”

That openness has always been fundamental to Ezra Collective. Femi Koleoso, TJ Koleoso, Joe Armon-Jones, James Mollison and Ife Ogunjobi came together through London’s youth music community, with the band’s roots stretching back to the free music education program Tomorrow’s Warriors. They grew up in a city where African, Caribbean and British musical traditions constantly intersected, and spent the next decade rejecting the idea that jazz needed to be elitist, restrained or inaccessible. Their shows became rooms where jazz could move like club music, where musicianship and release existed side by side, and where an audience was invited into the music rather than asked to quietly observe it. That philosophy ultimately carried five friends from youth clubs and small London stages to the Mercury Prize, the BRIT Awards and a sold-out Wembley Arena.

On Here Because of Hope, Ezra Collective push that philosophy further. The record does not pretend pain disappears. Instead, it explores the journey from one emotional state to another, using harmony, rhythm and melody to create joy without denying what came before it. As Rolling Stone UK observes, “the joy is a destination”: this is an album that can make listeners dance without asking them to pretend everything is fine.

Ezra Collective will bring Here Because of Hope to North America this November for a five-city headline run, kicking off November 12 in San Francisco before stops at Los Angeles’ The Regent Theater, Toronto’s Concert Hall, New York’s Webster Hall and Montréal’s Théâtre Beanfield.

With Here Because of Hope, Ezra Collective arrive at the other side of more than a decade spent growing together, playing together and continually expanding what a jazz band can look, sound and feel like. It is a record rooted in history without being trapped by it, built from the movement of Black music across oceans but grounded firmly in the London that made them.

Here Because of Hope Tracklist

Part I (Read by Letitia Wright)

Blow Your Trumpet

Sweet Echo

Don’t Worry

Only Love feat. Pa Salieu

Someday

Part II (Read by Letitia Wright)

Birdie Sings

The Last Stand

Well Organised feat. Lila Iké

El Corazón

Bunny On The Rise

Part III (Read by Letitia Wright)

All I Need feat. Leona Lewis

Jubilee Feeling

Black Flag

Most High feat. Libianca

Ezra Collective North American Tour Dates

Nov. 12 — San Francisco, CA — Bimbo’s 365 Club

Nov. 14 — Los Angeles, CA — The Regent Theater

Nov. 16 — Toronto, ON — Concert Hall

Nov. 18 — New York, NY — Webster Hall

Nov. 19 — Montréal, QC — Théâtre Beanfield