Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

River Run Thee is the third chapter of Coin Coin, Matana Roberts' planned 12-part series,[4] which began with Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres in 2011.[5] The series is an exploration of American history and African-American history.[5][6] It also documents Roberts' research into her familial ancestry, her sexuality, and her travel.[7][5][8] Grayson Currin of Pitchfork wrote Coin Coin "seemed an audacious undertaking, an epic that would either put Roberts in rarified visionary company or find her struggling near anonymity".[9]

Coin Coin touches on various topics in American and African-American history, including the roots of American slavery, the Reconstruction era, myth in the American Afrodiaspora, the Civil rights movement, and the current state of racism in the United States.[9][8] The series' name was derived from Marie Thérèse Coincoin.[10] The surname was also used as a nickname for Roberts by her parents.[10] As of 2022, Roberts has released 4 chapters of Coin Coin. River Run Thee was preceded by Mississippi Moonchile (2013) and followed by Memphis (2019), the second and fourth chapters respectively.

A room in Hotel2Tango, where the album was recorded

In comparison to previous installments in the series, River Run Thee's instrumentation was performed by only Roberts.[11][12] It was described as the "most vast" of the series by Jake Cole of Spectrum Culture, and the "most layered and multifaceted" of the series by Jazz Scott of Tiny Mix Tapes .[13][14] The album was recorded in Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and recorded and mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh.[2][15] The album mostly uses voice and saxophone.[2] According to Joseph Burnett of The Quietus, "without a band to work with, Roberts turns to electronics to bolster her singing and saxophone".[4]

River Run Thee is an electroacoustic,[7][13] drone,[16] and free jazz[16] album which contains elements of tape collage, spoken word, field recordings, drones, and effects pedals.[7][4][11][17] The album includes: samples from a 1965 Malcolm X lecture, entitled "Confronting White Oppression"; readings from works by Captain G.L. Sullivan; and American nationalist and traditional songs, for example, "The Star-Spangled Banner".[2][10] Roberts also used a recording of Gertrude, a homeless woman, from 2014.[10]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[10]
Consequence	B[18]
Exclaim!	6/10[7]
No Ripcord	6/10[17]
Pitchfork	8.2/10[9]
Spectrum Culture	[14]
Spin	8/10[19]
TheNeedleDrop	6/10[20]
Tiny Mix Tapes	[13]

On Pitchfork's list of "The Best Experimental Albums of 2015," by Marc Masters and Grayson Currin, River Run Thee placed sixth.[21] Currin described the album as a "seamless collision of both her and the nation's past and present".[21] Similarly, on a list of the "20 Best Avant Albums of 2015" by Christopher Weingarten of Rolling Stone, River Run Thee ranked fifteenth.[11] Weingarten described the album as "a more austere outing composed on loop and effects pedals, Roberts culls dazzling swarms for voice, drone and her own impassioned alto sax solos".[11]

Joseph Burnett of The Quietus called the album "harrowing", and praised Roberts for her vivid imagery and mournful singing.[4] Burnett described it as a "broiling, uncompromising work that rips down genre barriers altogether".[4] In a positive review, Currin wrote, "it's now clear that Roberts isn't just a storyteller, musician, ethnographer, historian, bandleader, arranger, improviser, or activist. She plays all of those roles".[9] Nick Storring of Musicworks called it brilliant, and found its listening experience to be "utterly overwhelming".[2]

Jazz Scott of Tiny Mix Tapes called the album "infinite and indispensable in its cultural worth and true-ly [sic] timeless and comprehensive in its scope".[13] Lior Phillips of NPR praised the album for its cohesiveness and its historical roots, and used metaphors to describe it, including calling it a "forest", "womb", and "quilt".[16] Phillips also wrote, "Roberts immerses herself and the listener in a history of anguish, and channels it all into a magnetic unity, a postmodern opus."[16] Colin Joyce of Spin gave the album 8 out of 10 points and wrote, "free jazz has never been quite so free".[19] Adam Kivel of Consequence said the album was the most personal so far of the series.[18] Kivel also wrote, "[the album] is the most challenging entry in her massive undertaking, but a truth like this shouldn't be easy".[18]

Anthony Fantano of TheNeedleDrop called the album a "stand-out record that boldly experimented," but criticized it for its "cold reading of historic documents," since this lacked the emotion of the previous installments in the series.[20] Nilan Perera of Exclaim! enjoyed the denseness of the instrumental layers, but found that the unchanging soundscape made it harder to hear the words, "which seem to reveal little".[7] Joseph Moore of No Ripcord related the album to the modern state of racism against Black Americans.[17] Moore found the album an "exhausting" listen which listeners would find hard to finish.[17]

• Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee on Bandcamp