Geordie Greep : The New Sound

Geordie Greep The New Sound review

I resisted Black Midi at first, if you can believe it. Something about the acclaim around their debut, a bunch of teenage wunderkinds playing math rock, that rubbed me wrong; it felt impossible, like another band the indie-aligned music critical world rallies behind but leaves me cold and disappears leaving almost now trace shortly after. It was only with the release of their second record Cavalcade that I buckled and gave it a go. It turns out what people had failed to tell me was that the group was really a progressive rock combo, partly the post-Zappa avant-prog and jazz-rock of certain European and Japanese schools, part frenetic math rock in a very post-King Crimson manner, and a final dose of The Fall or Current 93 as scored by Television, some lacelike guitar patterns and jazz-aligned playing but with a punk ferocity. Needless to say, I became a devotee. It’s good to eat crow sometimes.

Geordie Greep’s solo debut is not Black Midi. Had this been released under that name, I doubt many would have considered it so far from the mark that it would be alarming. Not only was Greep a major songwriting and performing factor of that previous group, but this record itself features the presence of former collaborators too. What has changed? Well, this is an album I’d more likely have learned about through ProgArchives than Pitchfork, if you get me, perhaps seeing it on a hip and writerly place like The Quietus but not much more mainstream. These pieces are denser, not in terms of more clattering arrangements but instead more force behind them, performing a fascinating two-fold trick of reducing the amount of conflicting information while intensifying what’s there to near-heavy metal levels. This is in part such a large shock because the music itself can best be described as Steely Dan tunes played by the ’70s King Crimson lineup, Zappa rescoring a rediscovered compilation of salsa and tango favorites, or a chanteuse singing through the lens of a chemical nightmare.

The fact that it takes so many different facets to describe this music satisfactorily proves a point about the increasing individuation of Greep as a player, a singer, a writer. That last one is especially interesting: before, lyrics in Black Midi songs passed like a raconteur ranting half-mad, not a thing to listen to so much as to hear. Here, the patter somehow cuts through a bit cleaner, revealing ugly and abstruse tales, written with a literary ear like if Bukowski was more aware of what a piece of shit he was, these contradicting and deeply conflicted layers of disgust and pitiful empathy, watching these loathsome figures on their worst days, scrambling unsuccessfully to get clean. This in turn explains the music a bit more. The extravagances here no longer read like overly talented youths shredding their hearts out to impress people twice or thrice their age. Now, these are a particular kind of nearly-sexy, stupidly swaggering, ’70s New York cool stained by history’s backward gaze at what a horrible fucking time that was. Zappa’s biggest failure in many ways was his deep cynicism, marrying a genius level musical and arranging mind to a wit that felt boringly sardonic. Greep may not quite be the musical genius that Zappa was (though at only 25, maybe he gets there), but his writerly pen is more robust and crenelated, a little Philip Roth and a little Saul Bellow, a little Don DeLillo and a little, well, Donald Fagen.

On the back end, we get 20 minutes of music across two lengthy cuts, “As If Waltz” and “The Magician,” suddenly morphing into that other brilliant group from the same scene, Black Country, New Road, who ended their second album in similar fashion. If Greep’s standard songwriting milieu is already progressively multi-faceted, then these are like concatenated crystals dug fresh from the cave. Does “The Magician” resemble “And You And I,” “Starship Trooper,” “I’ve Seen All Good People”? Or is it a peak early Genesis cut in disguise, with those overlapping fingerpicked acoustic guitars? It’s excitingly impossible to tell.

So much of art is alchemy and charisma rather than pure skill, where technical acumen is a necessary means to an end but not the only one. I’ve heard so many bands attempt this kind of deep eclecticism and come across as rank amateurs, annoying in their constant pivots which betray more an intent to impress than a real desire to follow the muse. This is the complete inversion of that; emotional logic is the backbone here, with the lyrical sets being the nerve fibers inside. It feels so much less like each element of the music is developed to explicate on another and so much more that they emerged naturally that way. Who knows which it was; sometimes the most effortless music was secretly composed in agonizing piecemeal fashion. Regardless: this is not the foolish self-destructive solo jaunt which destroys the promising group for the false and failing promise of greater personal riches; this is Zappa after the Mothers, stretching wings, drying dew, growing fat and strong.


Label: Rough Trade

Year: 2024


Similar Albums:

Geordie Greep The New Sound review

Geordie Greep : The New Sound

Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.

View Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Scroll To Top