Tony Stamp reviews new albums from Scotland trio Young Fathers, femme-forward Brooklyn band Say She She, and music for float tanks by NZ's Kraus.
Heavy Heavy by Young Fathers
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There used to be a neat narrative about how each decade was defined musically, and I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. There’s just a lot of everything. Many acts shun genre entirely, and some distil so many influences into a three-minute song that trying to label them is a hopeless task. One of the finest of those is a band that hails from Edinburgh, Scotland, that's just released their fourth album.
Every new LP by Young Fathers is a cause for celebration, and their latest is as infectious and effervescent as ever. Each song merges too many genres to mention, does it effortlessly, and is invested with the kind of enthusiasm and passion it’s impossible to fake.
Five years ago Cocoa Sugar showed the trio of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham Hastings in a somewhat more refined light. Heavy Heavy feels like an effort to recapture the spontaneity of their early records and marry it to more considered elements. They’re not afraid to alternate between quiet and chaotic, often in the same song.
From steel drums to walls of noise, sampled movie dialogue, hyperactive drum machines, influences drawn from Alloysious and Kayus’ lineage (Liberian and Nigerian respectively), and slabs of bass, this album has a lot of everything. The name of the record alludes to the weight of the world, but Heavy Heavy applies equally to the music, which can feel impossibly dense in its moments of overload, but always celebratory.
All three speak, rap, croon and belt out impassioned melodies, stuffing each song with memorable hooks. Their live show in Auckland remains one of the best I’ve seen, even though it was just the trio singing over pre-recorded backing tracks. They gave every bit of energy they had to entertain a small club, and they’re able to invest their recordings with the same potency.
I interviewed Graham during that same visit, and when I commented on the rough 'n' ready sound of their recordings, he chuckled. Maybe he was just amused by my accent, but I worried I’d offended him. Listening to Heavy Heavy I get the sense that the roughness is more deliberate now; the result of pursuing something in the studio rather than impatience or limited resources.
That doesn’t make it a better or worse record, but I will note it’s rare for a band to reach album #4 and still sound this inspired, or this hungry. They’re the kind of act that makes anything seem possible, blasting notions of genre out of the water and anchoring each song with their three intertwining voices, even when they’re surrounded by chaos.
Prism by Say She She
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This debut was self-described as ‘feminist funk’ and ‘discodelic soul’, emerging from contemporary NYC but undoubtedly influenced by decades past. It’s a collection that aims to entertain, and pay homage to its creators’ record collections, but excels in the moments it forgets about those things and just has fun.
Say She She is a reference to their femme-forward politics, and also a wink to the Nile Rogers lyric “C’est chi chi”, and those two things sum up the group rather neatly.
In the past they’ve written songs about eighties activists Guerilla Girls and the overturning of Roe v Wade, and while there’s nothing that political on Prism, it’s there in the subtext. So while “Please be with me forever”, sung in the chorus of ‘Pink Roses’, could initially seem cliché, it's actually a tribute to one singer’s mum rather than anything romantic.
And musically, they’re clearly students of seventies vibes, whether it’s the rapid guitar picking on that track or the era-specific flute on ‘Same Things’.
The trio of Americans Nya Parker Gazelle, Sabrina Cunningham, and British ex-pat Piya Malik are each classically trained, and the way their voices complement each other is a big part of Say She She’s appeal.
Details around the rest of the band are deliberately vague, and on this record seem to have been a rotating cast. There are credits for former members of bands like The Dap-Kings and The Extraordinaires, and while these names certainly add some legitimacy, they’re referenced with affection and respect and really deliver the goods on tape.
The band’s affection for sounds of the past extends to their recording methods, and they’ve specifically mentioned using analogue tape in their sessions or emulating it via digital methods. There’s a warm, vintage glow enveloping Prism, to the extent that I’ve seen it described as ‘lo fi’, but to my ears it's slick in a way only modern records can be, stopping just shy of fussed-over. The hazy sheen assists another element of the mission statement though: they said they aimed to make their music soothing.
Since this release Say She She have output several more singles, a promising sign in that they're clearly prolific, and that the newer music is a return to something a bit spikier and more unexpected. Prism is accomplished and catchy but seems to be intentionally playing it safe with its winks at the past. To my ears its best track is the final one - called ‘Better Man’, it sheds many of the album’s accoutrements and spotlights the lead trio’s voices, bathed in reverb, and full of feeling.
Seahorse Wedding (Music for Float Tanks)
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When approaching a new album by the Auckland-based psychedelic musician Pat Kraus, it’s hard to know where to start. He’s been very prolific over the last twenty years, somewhat hard to pin down stylistically and often musically challenging. So it’s helpful, honestly, that his newest album, following the two he released last year, comes with a neat thematic hook: it’s made to be listened to in a float tank.
Seahorse Wedding (Music for Float Tanks), was commissioned by Wellington experimental music hub The Pyramid Club and is available on request at Float Well, which offers a range of float tank experiences, including sensory deprivation.
To that end Kraus has created music that’s calming and aquatic, layering melodies over arpeggios in a way that’s quietly propulsive. Some of its tracks extend past the ten-minute mark, and while that’s appropriate for an immersive experience, it also hits on something specific to this kind of hypnotic composition: the more it goes on the less you want it to stop.
Synthesis has been a part of his sound for some time now, but it’s increasingly come to the fore, displacing a previous focus on what he describes (accurately) as “dirty sounds… distorted guitars and blown out drums”.
He said that in conversation with Hamilton Underground Press a few years ago, and in the same interview disclosed that part of the reason behind this shift was coming to terms with the autoimmune and inflammatory condition he was diagnosed with in his twenties, and wanting his music to reflect a newfound optimism. He described his new sound as “clean linoleum”.
The palette on Seahorse Wedding emulates the sounds of water, from hi-hats that hiss like gentle waves to synths popping like bubbles in a rock pool. It’s also wrapped in a cute conceptual framework, as its name suggests. Other titles are ‘Celebrant Crustacean’, ‘Reception (Band of Dolphins), and ‘Sandcastle Abbey’ (an extended version of a track from an earlier Kraus album, which thematically fits nicely here).
Kraus has released over twenty albums since 2002, on adventurous indie labels around the world. He was recently profiled in the longstanding British magazine The Wire. Dip into his catalogue and this attention will become obvious.
Seahorse Wedding is designed for immersive listening and is perfect to zone out to. But closer listening reveals so much going on in terms of programming and performance. You may find it has your full attention.
