The arresting new solo piano recording from Jason Moran gets its title from the late Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, a long-time culinary arts contributor for NPR. (How do you know when your chicken has been in the fryer long enough, one might ask. Smart-Grosvenor’s answer: “The sound will tell you.”) The title befits an album that speaks not just through its form, but through its depth of tone, conveying the weariness of its origins but also a deep reservoir of wisdom and resilience; an album that feels both modest and cavernous at the same time. Moran recorded The Sound Will Tell You, currently a Bandcamp exclusive, in just three days at the start of 2021; the final sessions were held on the same day white nationalists stormed the Capitol. This truly is music for piano only, though— just like on Modernistic, Moran’s 2002 exemplar of the form— he does employ some elegant technological enhancements, including what he calls a “DRIP” effect, which gives his notes something of a sustained resonance, or shadow. As such, the songs generally move with a languid gait (intentionally modeled on the music of DJ Screw), and the music feels as thick and muggy as our COVID summer, the George Floyd summer, stretching into an airless winter of discontent. But it’s not music of despair so much as fortitude: Many of the song titles borrow turns of phrase from Toni Morrison, another indicator of the depths of strength, dignity, and resolve that Moran is tapping.

Always an evocative pianist, he conjures our recent and not-so-recent history of violence in “How much more terrible was the Night,” shaping minor-key jitters into a full-on Hitchcockian nightmare. If that makes the album sound sobering, well, sure: These are pensive reflections for a fraught era, and the first half of the record, in particular, leans into melancholy tunes and a solemn mood. But Moran’s gift for sustaining a particular tone does not preclude mischief or exploration. One of the great fascinations of his catalog is how he fixates on certain songs and ideas, using them as benchmarks for his creative evolution; here it’s an animated version of “Body & Soul,” which sounds livelier than it did when he played it on Modernistic. “Hum then Sing then Speak,” appearing near the album’s end, reconnects Moran with the bluesmen and stride piano legends he’s venerated in the past; and in doing so, it connects The Sound Will Tell You to a long lineage of music that bears beauty from brutality. “The only morning coming,” with a melody as clean and simple as a songbook standard, finds romantic undercurrents within the album’s prevailing sadness. But Moran saves the album’s greatest masterpiece for the very end. The earthy, molasses-thick “Toni Morrison said Black is a Rainbow” sounds at once halting and resolute— the perfect summation of this quietly majestic album, which both testifies to its times but also transcends them.