Around the turn of the year, I bought a pair of white Puma trainers. I’m not, nor ever have been, a white trainers kinda guy, but I spotted a pair online that were reduced to a price point commensurate with my budget and spontaneously bought them. Just the thing, I thought, to complete my (cough) look for Spring/Summer ’24.
When I put them on, my kids slagged me mercilessly. My wife looked affronted, mumbled something about golf shoes then pretended not to have noticed them. These things were white. White. Like, absolutely spotless and Persil white. Crease-free and box-fresh, they were almost mirror-like in their pure patina. Even Kanye might have thought twice about styling an outfit around them. There was no suede trim to soften the harshness, no flash of colour other than a tiny gold Puma logo on the side and a khaki green tab on the heel. The uppers were white. The laces were white. The Puma stripe was white. They were the whitest trainers of all time.
I wear them, of course. A guy like me can easily carry them off.
Much more appealing than white Pumas ’round here is Black Pumas. Or Black Pyoomaz, as we’d say in the west of Scotland. Or Black Poomas, as they themselves say.
2019’s self-titled debut should be your first port of call if you’re in any way unfamiliar or curious about them. Self-styled Texan psychedelic soul, Black Pumas crackles with all the ingredients needed in a recipe for soul; vibrato-heavy guitar, watertight pistol-crack drums, flab-free horns, free-form Hammond, oohing and cooing female backing singers and an easy-going vocalist who, you’ll understand from the first line sung, has a honey-coated voice the equal of any of the greats who nestle snugly in that decent record collection of yours.
Black Pumas – Colors
Snaking in on a skeletal and ever-looping acoustic guitar riff, Colors is Black Pumas in microcosm. A ripple of barroom piano undercuts the earworm riff. Super-tight snare and air-spray hi-hat rimshot and hiss between the spaces. Electric guitar chords ripple outwards as we near the chorus. A suitably low-key yet funk-inflected bass line joins in. A sashay of females replicate the vocal lines and we’re properly off and running.
Oh yeah, the vocals. Head Puma Eric Burton honed his voice in the church, and you’ll hear that in his phrasing and adlibbing pleasantries – Yes, sir… yes, ma’am – as easy-going and soulful a delivery as you could possibly want to hear. He can do gritty and he can do tear-soaked, but what he really enjoys is letting loose and soaring off into a far-flung falsetto in the choruses. Colors is peppered with great, voice-cracking upper register spontaneity… yeah, he’s got it all.
He’s joined by slow-elbowed strings, a jazzy and unscripted electric piano solo that could’ve danced itself off of any of those old Billy Preston recordings of the ’70s and an arrangement that quietens and stirs, ebbs and flows like a golden hour Al Green. That wee ‘wooh-hoo, wooh-hoo, ooh-hoo, hoo‘ call and response section in the middle, where Burton’s vocals bounce off some plucked strings and the girls’ voices behind him is the sweetest of sweet spots.
I’ve listened to Colors many times in the last 5 years and always presumed it was a metaphorical reference to skin colour and racism. Last week I stumbled across a Song Exploder podcast episode where Black Pumas described the process behind the song and its meaning. It turns out it was written by Burton on his guitar as he sat on a rooftop watching the New Mexico sunrise alight on a brand new day. No metaphor, no hidden meaning, just a great, simplistic song about God’s creation of the natural world.
“It’s a good day to be,” suggests Burton, and with records like this on repeat, and trainers (trainurz) as funky as the ones on my not-in-the-least-affronted feet, it sure is. Black Pumas would refer to them as sneakers though. Not that I’m able to do much sneaking in a pair of shoes that look like a pair of Russian oligarch’s yachts moored proudly in an exclusive Mediterranean coastal resort.
Plain Or Pan 