If Geordie Greep’s run with Black Midi informed us something, it’s that he’d quite you not get too snug. The band’s three albums provided a confounding fusion of technical brilliance, gnarly imagery and proggy pomp that left you satisfied you didn’t know the half of what was actually happening. Rising solely months after their break up was confirmed (in suitably complicated trend), his debut solo file proves that, in that regard, there’s a couple of technique to pores and skin a cat.
Recorded between São Paulo and London throughout Black Midi’s remaining throes, ‘The New Sound’ is simply as disorienting and discomfiting as Greep’s earlier work, however it’s tonally distinct. Right here, within the firm of greater than 30 session musicians, he leans exhausting into Steely Dan smut, música well-liked brasileira and snaking rhythms. Add the lyrics concerning the imagined lives of loser males who, virtually invariably, brag and sneer earlier than being uncovered as empty shells, and there’s a definite lounge lizard sheen to all of it. However everytime you momentarily really feel like you’ve got a deal with on one thing, it’s undercut by an outlandish flip of phrase, a shift in perspective or, midway by way of the opening track ‘Blues’, a kick drum salvo that rewires your mind.
There’s pressure all through between the standard of the enjoying, which is executed at dazzling pace with out sacrificing something in the way in which of really feel, and the disconnect and disorientation created by the various layers of that means, counter-meaning and ironic distance that outline Greep’s strategy to lyrical ideas and character work. This wasn’t actually a problem with Black Midi, a band whose attraction was partly based upon overwhelming the listener, whether or not with quantity, breakneck tempo switches, or blizzards of notes.
On ‘The New Sound’, although, Greep is neck deep in types that lend themselves to listener participation past head-nodding and slack-jawed awe. Extra particularly, that is music for dancing. However he nonetheless desires the listener to know that, on some stage, they’re being messed with. There are moments the place Greep does sq. this circle, because of the deft melodic swerves of ‘By way of the Struggle’, for instance, or the skronking guitars and horns of ‘As If I Waltz’, however in any other case it is a file that’s very a lot in its personal head. It’s not essentially attempting to be intelligent – extra that the sheer weight of its many concepts crushes the extra visceral response that its apparent instrumental swagger calls for from its listener.
Particulars:
- Launch date: October 4, 2024
- Document label: Tough Commerce
