Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Drum
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes as a single album with a large fold-out poster with the (necessary) lyrics.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
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Trying to decode Edinburgh-based trio Young Fathers' third album is akin to peering into a kaleidoscope and attempting to describe to someone down a faulty phone connection the rotating colour patterns.
Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham Hastings have a broad palette which includes thumping acoustic funk, the casualness of the Beta Band and early Beck, a touch of glam stomp, African chants and plenty of spontaneous lo-fi soul with whoops, ululations and the echo of their basement studio.
Whatever Young Fathers are doing sounds like a whole lot of fun. But it's serious too.
The hefty beat of the urgent I Saw – with the catchy hook “I saw what I saw, I keep walking the line” – belies a message about racist rhetoric, but in language as convoluted as Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues: “Not falling for your charms, no crash into your arms. A handful of coins and a balled-up fist. Picking rubbish, cleaning rubbish. A bad seed, a rotten apple. Take out the rubbish”.
The pop-rap and relentless motorik pulse of Drum sounds a hoot but “they're gonna get ya either way, whether you cry about today or die another day. I'd rather sleep, but they say better stay awake”.
Here too is falsetto soul on the scratchy Shoot Me Down (and buried behind the increasingly oppressive sound of Tell Someone), a twisting trip to Southern Africa (Ululation which puts Paul Simon's Graceland influences through a blender) and the final track Be Your Lady comes perilously close to mainstream R'n'B pop. But not for long.
Put Young Father's fascinating kaleidoscope of mashed sounds to your ear and see what you hear.
Or hear what you see.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
Young Fathers are interviewed at Elsewhere here.
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