SAULT continues their Christo-funk crusade on the soul-affirming 10

For example, the output of SAULT since their 2019 debut reminds me of discovering the Beatles, in terms of creativity, frequency, reinvention, and quality. Lightning has not struck me, so it must not be blasphemy to say. It’s restless invention that makes you an artistic hero, and life is too short to be shy about such things. Between records like 5 and Untitled (Rise), my personal pick for album of the decade as the tally currently stands, they live paradoxically as both fully-formed and incessantly in-flux.

The r&b/funk/punk/gospel/pop/rock collective is, in a genre I will call “etc”, cored by spousal duo Inflo & Cleo Sol. Since 2019, they have released multiple albums every year, within SAULT and as themselves, culminating in 5 full-length, full-term albums being birthed on a single day in November 2022. You bet your ass I skipped class that day. When history lays itself in front of you, it serves to notice it. In 2024, they released but a single album (the fluid Acts of Faith) and only put on multiple concerts in a planned tour; by their standards, this is nearly a retirement announcement.

Maybe the reasoning behind their newest release, 10, was a sound one; after the big blowout sale in 2022, they have sufficiently depopulated the market enough to start releasing again. With each of their 11 or so records as SAULT, they oscillate to a different shade of their core sound, picking instruments like interior designers pick a color triad of complementary tones. This time around, they’ve gone with speedometer-breaking tempos, a D’Angelo-led Sunday Service, and zoo animal sounds; exquisite as always.

Two trends in their oeuvre find natural endpoints here: the shift from political calls to action led by their faith has grown into calls to faith led by, and bear with me, their faith, and them forgetting to fully produce their songs. After a few relatively stripped down records in 2022 found value in constant repetition, a second brick has flown the way of their heads and re-instilled the idea that you can just find value in writing a fully fleshed out song instead. I would listen either way, but one scenario is closer to stockholm syndrome than the other.

10, as its ratio of inclusion could imply, is perhaps their least remarkable record, from its messaging which has grown increasingly unrelatable outside of religious contexts, and a collection of instrumentals which are another iteration of a sound previously travelled on more groundbreaking records. But don’t forget, they’re still firmly within zeitgeist territory; they’re not the Rolling Stones in 2025 still pretending like 70s blues still works if the arena’s large enough. They’re the Beatles spinning their wheels on Help! Even if it’s not a resolutely new idea, it’s one they just had, its body is still warm, or even still alive. Ideas don’t just die after they’re laid to tape. If anything, SAULT is damning evidence that if you treat that one vision with respect, it’ll sing for as long as you want.