Forget shanties in English with a concertina. Skull and Bones pulls its crew songs from Swahili, Malagasy, French Creole, and Malay, and it completely changes the texture of what a pirate shanty album sounds like. "Vita Vya Maharamia" has this call-and-response vocal rhythm that gets stuck in your head for days, and "Ke Telok Penjarah" rolls with a Malay melody that feels genuinely lived-in.
Read more
"Leave Her, Johnny" is the one familiar Western shanty here and it almost feels out of place next to everything else. The whole album just breathes differently. "Pique la Baleine" with its French cadence hitting over hand percussion.
If you're tired of every pirate game sounding like the same North Atlantic tavern, this is the antidote.