Now not an underdog, Genesis Owusu is rising into life as a bonafide star. ‘Struggler’, the second album from the Ghanaian-born, Canberra-based musician, is the work of an artist giving energy to a few of his most radical sonic concepts. Songs don’t typically construct to a crescendo, they start there. He indulges in futurist leanings – together with a recurring motif of apocalypse and unpredictable chord progressions – with a putting confidence, a transfer which means that he has discovered the liberty to discover each side of his expertise as a author and vocalist.
Owusu’s debut ‘Smiling With No Tooth’, launched in 2021, confirmed off his uninhibited method to pop music – an exhilarating, powerfully intense sprawl of smouldering angst with shards of vivid instrumentation. The album quickly grew to become a sleeper hit in his native Australia: alongside sweeping the ARIA Awards, within the years which have adopted, Owusu has gone on to headline a sold-out Sydney Opera Home, tour US arenas with Paramore, and carry out on the Bose and NME’s C23 reside showcase at Austin’s SXSW. But the matter of survival amidst burgeoning success is central to ‘Struggler’, a direct response to Owusu’s newfound standing as one in every of his nation’s most in-demand musical prospects.
Largely impressed by Samuel Beckett’s 1953 tragicomedy Ready for Godot, ‘Struggler’ centres on a brief story Owusu penned about an invented character known as The Roach: a stressed determine navigating impending doom and environmental catastrophe. Over a low, vibrating hum of distortion, on the horror movie-esque ‘Previous Man’, Owusu’s ideas develop more and more existential: “On a regular basis I get up / Boy I’m battling Goliath.” ‘That’s Life (A Swamp)’, in the meantime, is an odd, scintillating disco shimmy, and ‘Tied Up’ pairs a spoken-word verse with a jagged bassline. Press play on ‘Balthazar’ and also you’re met with a burst of ‘70s-style funk falsetto croons.
That’s a variety of moods for one album, however Owusu’s dedication to the narrative arc retains ‘Struggler’ from dropping focus. On this week’s NME cowl story, the 25-year-old stated that throughout these pressing and catchy songs, The Roach is “going by means of this entire psychological disaster.” You possibly can hear this within the riveting depth of ‘Leaving The Gentle’s melee of electronics, or the punk thrash of ‘Keep Blessed’. Trauma and perseverance are markers of ‘What Comes Will Come’; the track’s latter half, nevertheless, evolves right into a gorgeously gritty circulation, bringing the readability of Owusu’s storytelling into sharp aid. A lot of ‘Struggler’ could also be unsettled however it by no means feels stressed.
By upholding references to The Roach, the strains between fantasy and actuality regularly blur on ‘Struggler’. You get the sense, nevertheless, that Owusu can also be interrogating his personal private mythology: he’s now not certain by the injuries of his previous, however empowered by them.
Particulars
- Launch date: August 18
- Document label: Secretly Canadian
