Geordie Greep – ‘The New Sound’ album evaluation

If Geordie Greep’s run with Black Midi informed us something, it’s that he’d slightly you not get too comfy. The band’s three albums supplied 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 cut up was confirmed (in suitably complicated trend), his debut solo report proves that, in that regard, there’s a couple of strategy 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 laborious into Steely Dan smut, música fashionable brasileira and snaking rhythms. Add the lyrics in regards to the imagined lives of loser males who, nearly 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 gotten a deal with on one thing, it’s undercut by an outlandish flip of phrase, a shift in perspective or, midway via the opening track ‘Blues’, a kick drum salvo that rewires your mind.

There’s stress all through between the standard of the enjoying, which is executed at dazzling velocity with out sacrificing something in the way in which of really feel, and the disconnect and disorientation created by the various layers of which means, counter-meaning and ironic distance that outline Greep’s method 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 needs the listener to know that, on some degree, they’re being messed with. There are moments the place Greep does sq. this circle, due to the deft melodic swerves of ‘By the Struggle’, for instance, or the skronking guitars and horns of ‘As If I Waltz’, however in any other case this can be a report that’s very a lot in its personal head. It’s not essentially making an attempt 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
• Report label: Tough Commerce