The seasons are changing for Muhammad Seven & the Spring. After five years in full bloom, the Boston group performs their final show at Club Passim tonight (May 7), fusing elements of their past and present at the historic folk music club.
“The band members from every iteration of our band will be present (including Jose Downes, who drove back from New Mexico) and the show will partly be a retrospective, telling the story of the band and how each of us was drawn to the project,” frontman Muhammad Seven tells Vanyaland. “I suppose this final full band show is a chance for me to lay bare all the personal and political — and in some ways spiritual — poetry I’ve set to music over the last five years.”
But Muhammad Seven & the Spring didn’t want to drop off the scene without dropping their sophomore album first. The group’s farewell show doubles an exclusive release show, where fans can not only hear unreleased music, but walk away with a digital copy of it as a parting gift. While Seven plans to release the new record (title TBA) piecemeal, tonight’s guests will receive the complete project a year before it hits streaming services.
“My producer — Colin Lester Fleming of Q Division, among other studios — and I sifted through at least three albums of material to make it and I feel intensely proud of how our sophomore studio record has turned out,” Seven says. “People are always telling me that the age of the album is over, that singles are all people will listen to, but I’m stubborn and still insist on experiencing music in album form whenever possible. At the same time, it’s clearly true that music lovers are inundated with new songs, so I think it will help to offer this album up song by song, where I can present each one with care and intentionality.”
Seven actually decided to “double down” on his earnest presentation, opting for more cheerful themes in the band’s newest work — an emotional contrast to their older catalog, which was often tinged with hardship. Seven’s newfound high notes fill the pages of his bittersweet final chapter in Boston before his upcoming move to upstate New York.
“This show is a chance for me to acknowledge how important the band has been to me and how proud I am of what we’ve done,” Seven concludes. “All the shows, the albums, the music videos, our collaboration with the Boston City Singers on a Black Lives Matter music video… I hope this show will help me hold on to the impact all of these things made on my life.”
MUHAMMAD SEVEN & THE SPRING :: Saturday, May 7 at Club Passim, 47 Palmer St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m., $20 :: Tickets :: Facebook event page