Tag: race

Posted in Album of the Month, Music chat, New Albums, New Tunes

November AOTM: Joy Crookes – Juniper

Posted on by GuyHornsby

Yes, Joy is back, and isn’t that a good thing to say?

It was way back in January 2022 in Episode 19 that we first welcomed the south Londoner to the podcast, and I’ve been anticipating her next move ever since her brilliant debut, Skin, found its way into my life. That album – Crookes was already hyped and was nominated for the Brit Rising Star award in 2020 – truly put Crookes on the map, a heady mix of twenty-something south London life as a mixed-race women – growing up with an Irish father and Bangladeshi mother – painting nights out wrapped in cigarette smoke and JD and cokes, the 35 bus, parties, family, flirting and love, all set against deeper topics of mental health struggles, identity and nods to the good and bad of multicultural Britain. Trading on smoky soul, r’n’b, 60s pop, dancehall, as much of a melting pot as the city she calls home. It won the then 22 year old plaudits and a Mercury prize nomination.

It was a firm favourite in Hornsby towers; songs are still on my daughter’s playlist. It has been in my life ever since, a post-Covid breath of fresh air that seemed to have London as a backing singer, reminding me fondly of the place I called home for over two decades. The album was toured relentlessly over the next two years, with talk of new material in the studio, as well as Crookes’ appearance at fashion shows, festivals and even a Lexus advert, enjoying her new-found fame and bringing her own down-to-earth energy wherever she was. It was hard not to see her having the time of her life and not be there vicariously with her. And I wasn’t begrudging one single moment. She was the star we could all get behind.

But where was the new music I hoped for? It took until January of this year when Pass The Salt dropped: a new single, as yet decoupled from any expectation of a new album. And it felt fresh. Tricking us with a filtered soul intro, before dropping into heavy-drummed and bass-driven verse which felt like a statement of intent: “listen to this / I’ve got plenty to get off my chest.” Joy was back, but where had she been? This was a different tip to her smoky, ballsy, fun-filled sound of 2022. This was more weighty, direct, and pointed to a hardening of the now 26 years old artist: “I got thick skin on these bones, ah / When a bitch don’t rise to rumour / Get the words stuck in your throat, throat, throat”. It also featured a rasping verse from Compton native Vince Staples, elevating it and nudging away from expectations in under three minutes. As a comeback, it asked questions: what was next, what did Joy have to say this time, and was there an album coming soon too?

A second single followed soon after, again with a big name verse to shift thinking further: this time enlisting grime superstar and actor Kano for his verse in Mathematics. A more soul standard track this time, but with the grime OG’s vulnerable words standing out with power and poignancy alongside Crookes’ lyrics and pushing things forward (as well as starring in a memorable video for the release, below). On the surface, it felt like a song about unrequited love, but it also felt like something heavier loomed in the background. It raised the interest of both new directions, and what lay behind Crookes’ next step. After third single – the up-tempo pop of ‘I Know You’d Kill‘ in March – I finally got the news I was hoping for: a new album, Juniper, was due in September, almost four years to the day from her debut. It felt a long time, and as the media rounds started for that release, things became clear that it hadn’t been a simple ride for Crookes since she got on the hamster wheel.

For all the joy of the new record – to which we’ll come – there’s significant context to Juniper’s journey from studio to airwaves. In the middle of her rush of fame, things fell apart. The late nights and VIP rooms had been fun as she found her way up through the next tiers of the industry, but it all felt disconnected, causing Crookes to step away and question what was important to her. Talking to Grace Dent in her Comfort Eating podcast, she laid bare how hard it had hit her: “.…it was a very dark time. I was extremely unwell. Not in a good place. I had to face those mental health issues: after the high, I flew down. I was lonely and isolated, like I had no connection to anyone.” If it all sounds bleak, it was. Right at the point where she should be releasing a second album, there was questions around her own health, and whether it would actually happen.

While plainly laid out in its lyrics – opener Brave is an early statement: “I’m so sick, I’m so tired I can’t keep losing my mind / I want to be brave, I want to be in love / It’s time I stopped running away. I should stay” – Crookes had to contemplate confronting the reality of where her head was at to even get to the studio. Telling DIY mag: “Touring and everything is a great distraction but I obviously had something bubbling up for years in the background I’d decided not to deal with, mentally.” Sparked by coming out of a relationship, she realised her behaviours “were actually traits of someone with very specific traumas”. She had to choose between the party and her soul, and it came down to an easy choice, but a harder road: “you can fuck around, but the play time’s gonna end at some point. No more Alaïas or Tabis, you’re gonna have to put on your fuckin’ Salomons and go on the hike!” It’s what makes the joy of Juniper even greater, given what was overcome.

I’d already been playing the singles to death through the summer – the fast-paced 60s pop of I Know You’d Kill (penned about her love for her brilliant female manager) and the sultry Carmen, eschewing the simple love and loss for the myth of unattainable beauty – and they continued to come thick and fast. The modern trait of releasing half the album in tracks that’ll get the airplay and streaming numbers does dilute the mystery of the long player. But what was revealed early didn’t remove too much from the final product. It was so good to see Crookes back, and I was ready to play Juniper on repeat on day one, enjoying how much the singles change feeling as part of a greater whole.

It was such a bright, accessible listen. Crookes always had a skill for enveloping, classy soul and pop that – whatever the subject matter – you could tap and dance too, and her own vibrancy came through in every line. Brave’s dusky overtones were classic Crookes, but it felt laced with sadness: “Sometimes it’s hard to smile / When no hurt feels against us”, the vocals as rich and heady as ever, with its tales of love and the fear laying yourself open to someone else. Her wider palette of influences – not just Nina Simone or Sarah Vaughan, but also the first wave of Bristol’s trip-hop scene and Joy Division – seep into the album, and the first half of singles-heavy tracks, reward with layers. Flying through Pass The Salt – a track that sees Crookes call out an ‘arsehole woman’ who’d spread rumours about her – and Carmen‘s playful musings on beauty and expectation. Flitting effortlessly between genres and styles that revolve around her London soul and street sounds, she plays on her heritage – Perfect Crime’s video was shot in her mother’s homeland of Bangladesh, with Crookes goofing around on the river and the back of motorbikes, seemingly happy to be out of the other side of her trauma – and confidently wears it on her sleeve.

There are more musical departures that nod to a widening of horizons, too. For all of some reviewers seeing First Last Dance as a more derivative dance/pop track, it’s a firm favourite of mine already, and shows a willingness to move away from the template (and features one of my favourite lyrics on the album – ‘Feel like Travolta / Each time I hold ya’. And far from a breezy theme, like much of the album, it had a deeper narrative, relaying the anxiety felt during the recording process. As she told DIY Mag, “I was like, ‘my chest at the moment, you know that scene where they stab [Mia Wallace] with the needle because she’s taken way too much cocaine?’ They were like ‘yeah?’ and I was like, ‘well, that’s how it feels’.” She grins. “They were like ‘well, that’s a lyric!’”.

The production on the album really worked too. It was – to me – a bit more varied, but warm, full of layers, and above all, sat back to let Crookes’ voice shine through. The two work in harmony, and there feels like an added richness to her voice too, with a few years (and a few cigarettes) more, it’s so full of character. The album was a blend of studio talent: Blue May, her most regular partner, producing Skin before this record, was back. Harvey Grant also returned, having worked with Arlo Parks previously too. Tev’n – a collaborator with Stormzy – debuted, as did Chrome Sparks. With Crookes finding a way to blend al of this together, it sounds fantastic, but never overdone.

Of all the tracks that have found their way into my head, Somebody To You is the album’s zenith to me. Perhaps the simplest song on the record, it just aches with sadness and thoughtfulness (and features a sublime Sam Fender on backing vocals). Alongside the companion video, it feels like a classic love song, but once again the truth is more uncomfortable than that. Talking to Glamour magazine, she told how it actually hints at a familial relationship that had broken down in the interim and caused Joy to rethink what her life looks like without her reliance on that relative. And that also points to a bigger narrative about being a woman: “It’s such an important question for women trying to define their full adult selves outside of relationships that no longer serve them,” Crookes said, nodding to the line “‘Who am I when I’m out of your sight? I want to see how we look apart”, as “what the album really is about.”

The themes may more broadly always bring in love in all its raw detail – Perfect Crime’s title nods to the joy love after heartbreak – and Mathematics tells of unrequited love, with its verse recorded secretly by Kano, so moved was he by the song, and A House With A Pool, a tale of an abusive ex-partner and for Crookes “a shit year when I ground myself down into the smallest version of myself”. At each turn, there is something deeper running through Juniper than simple heartbreak. Where Skin was as much about love, identity, family and a love letter to her south London homeland, Juniper feels closer, more introspective.

It’s the sound of an artist that has grown up in the spotlight, suffered and questioned the outcomes of the very thing she loves, and come back to her centre of family and friends, to find connection and a way out of the trough. She is willing to put it all out there, and there’s a bravery and determination that makes Juniper rise above the simple follow-up on the same template and marks a step forward. Closer Paris muses on the effect of a relationship with another woman, Crookes calling out “one of the best songs I’ve ever done.” There’s a freedom to her admission that it didn’t matter to her being with someone rather than worrying about her internal voice’s worries: “Kinda wanted you to be my girlfriend / Didn’t wanna fuck with no more Catholic guilt / When it comes to pride / I’d raise my heart to a girl or guy”. It feels a distance from the person she was then, a willingness to embrace the emotion. I was stood in the crowd at Glastonbury in 2022 when she wept tears of joy at where she’d come to, and I think of that now and where this album will take her, a smile on my face.

Despite so much of the record being underpinned her exposure to fame and its pitfalls, it’s never painted in a morose or self-involved way. She is willing to reveal warts and all, and call out her own failings as much as her struggles. The tunes soar so well, and her lyrics are so sharp, clever, and zippy, that you feel you are always on Crookes’ side, even as she’s telling you her darkness of the past few years, while asking you not to pity her. She values her ‘reset’, and the people around her, from her family and pre-fame friends, to her manager Charlotte Owen, for whom I Know You’d Kill is a celebration of. There’s something beautiful about the fierce independence of two women, fighting back in an industry built on the male gaze.

As much as the subject matter weighs – and rightly so – on Juniper, it doesn’t flatten the melodies, and it’s also possible to let the album wash over you, dancing to the sound, as much as deep listening, headphones on, and taking in all of its majesty under the surface. And albums working on two levels are what we all love, right?

What Juniper gives me is a follow-up from a British songwriter of class, wit and honesty that feels every bit as good as the debut, with four more years of life, emotion, understanding and recovery poured into it. For all the struggles that Crookes has gone through, her determination to come out of the other side and bring that through to us in her music is a gift for all of us. In her early releases, there may have been lazy ‘next Winehouse’ comparisons, but I can’t think of another artist like her around, so steeped in London, and the clash of cultures that have made her who she is. We are lucky to have her and I hope you’ll see some of what I feel about Juniper in your own experience.

Posted in Album of the Month

March: Heavy Heavy – Young Fathers

Posted on by GuyHornsby
Young Fathers – I Saw

I find it staggering that it’s a whole 9 years since we covered Young Fathers’ debut Dead on the pre-podcast Blog days. In fact, it feels like a different lifetime, like so much before 2020 does. And yet almost a decade on, once I saw Heavy Heavy was dropping into my podcast slot, it didn’t seem like any other album would get a look in. But as soon as I picked it, I had to ask myself: just how much Young Fathers have you really listened to in the last few years? What do you know about them? Because it’s funny how much you like an artist or act and realise that outside those headphones you couldn’t even name them all.

The answer wasn’t quite as embarrassing as I’d quite feared, but it was much more odd tracks over supporting whole albums, which suddenly felt like I’d missed one of the most fascinating bands around completely. This thought would solidify over the next few weeks until it felt like a millstone. Despite this, one of the big reasons I’d chosen Heavy Heavy was just how much I’d loved the initial singles that appeared over the past 9 months. Geronimo arrived in July last year and as well as listening to it regularly, Spotify seemed to want to push it in my direction, something that puzzled me, (and there’s a wider discussion on the algorithm to be had later on). It made my end of year long list in 2022, with its quiet whispers sitting atop a brass-driven motif, before the discordant harmonies drew me in as it broke into song. A song, on its own, unwrapping the mystery of Young Fathers’ own kaleidoscopic sound and unique character in one, three-and-a-half minute epic.

Three more singles followed, in that strange streaming-era way that means you know a big chunk of most albums before they land, and each was different in its own brilliant way, from the bleak beauty of I Saw, evoking discarded immigrants (perhaps?) or – according to the band (from a recent Guardian interview) about how we all watched Brexit unfold and did, well, nothing. One song, many meanings. Follow-ups came from across the music spectrum: Tell Somebody’s swelling, orchestral lament and Rice’s loose, percussive chorus of voices. Of course, in isolation they felt like four great singles, but somewhat disconnected. But then, that’s how Young Fathers operate. Nothing is (as in Rice, the album’s opener) ‘in an orderly fashion’. They thrive on genre-bending records, jumping between styles even within a single chorus. But then, when it’s part of a whole, it all seems to fall into place.

Once thing I knew we’d get in comparison to some of the longer recent albums was brevity, focus and power. Heavy Heavy came in at 32 minutes, across ten songs. Heaven. Joey would have to get back through at least track 2 before his 39 minute walk ended! While not every album has to be 3 minute songs, this feels like a definite follow-on from their last album, 2018’s Cocoa Sugar, which saw the band make their most structured record to date, with its leaning on pop songs’ formula even as they retained their own badge. But where Cocoa Sugar was as restrained as Young Fathers get (and that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting here), Heavy Heavy has, for me, much higher highs and lower lows, musically and thematically.

Like all the best records it flies by: I’ve put it on twice many times already. But unlike some records which slip by almost unnoticed, this never fails to take the attention. In a music landscape of often rigidity – though lord knows there’s more than enough amazing music around – Young Fathers’ glorious m.o. of disregarding expectation and just letting rip – both softly and abrasively – is what marks them apart and frankly should have them even more lauded than their Mercury Prize-winning reputation deserves. I’ve listened to this album a lot, and while I have loved its sheer inventiveness, its vigour, its ability to slip between so many different colours on the spectrum, for a long while I struggled to work out how it made me feel.

Because we are all about the feels. And as I marvelled at Drum’s energy and uplifting falsetto, or Shoot Me Down’s chopped up samples dissolving into a weighty chant, or Ululation’s tribal wailing, it took me ages to land on what it meant. But now I’m there. It’s just JOY. The energy, the life that comes from this record, the way it lifts me up, you stand in its brilliant glare, absorbed, and then 30 minutes later, it’s gone. And I will sit there with a grin on my face, not sure what I’ve just listened to, what it may mean, but that I have experienced something pure. And that’s hard to pin down, and across their albums while the meaning may be elusive, even as Be Your Lady’s piano explodes into feedback, noise and a slew of vocals, I know that I am alive.

So – if we are to try while appraising this brilliant album – what the hell are Young Fathers? Song to song, it may be possible to divine something approaching genre. But nothing is certain from track to track, but it ends up feeling like it was all meant to be together. I can’t think of anyone else that really does this, though I will return to my favourite reference point: Genesis Owusu. I know we did this in reverse too, but I am now wondering how much Young Fathers he listened to? Because while Owusu has more funk and soul, courtesy of his tight musical collective, there is so much to see parallel here. But if its frustrating (not to me) for some to try and work out what this band is, it seems the music press, and platforms don’t seem to know either. People think they’re hip-hop (nope), noise (sometimes), rock (honestly). To me they are exploring the outer edges of pop music. It may not sound like a lot of pop you know, but it’s 3 minute songs, with song structure, and a group that really wants to push things to the limit, but they have a world and it’s very much their own. Even if no one can categorise it, who cares? Radio stations can’t even work out if they play them.

There is also a tangential link to Episode 30’s Rozi Plain album, Prize. While it may seem incongruous, the lyrical metaphor and opacity of Heavy Heavy leaves you searching for your own answers, as some of the best music only manages. Is Rice about slavery? Racism? Is Tell Somebody about mental health? Joy? Pain? It isn’t clear, but perhaps like last month’s album, it doesn’t really matter. Young Fathers are often elusive about their meanings, but if it works, it works? It’s refreshing not just to need to work to unpick lyrics, but to not still be sure 25 listens in.

I have also spent some time again with Dead, and their other two albums, 2015’s White Men Are Black Men Too, and the aforementioned Cocoa Sugar, and they have been every bit as fantastic as the first and newest were. Dead was – running to it last weekend – way more familiar than I’d have thought it would be. Music really does still have that ability to transport you to a time and place. For Dead, I’m not 100% sure what I was doing in 2014 when the album came out in February – probably being seasonably dismal – but an album that I remember felt way out of my comfort zone at the time, but nonetheless memorable, felt at turns familiar and also fresh. Get Up in particular, leapt out, its off-key drone still sounding really new, angry, edgy and vital. It’s a rare feat managing that after so long, but perhaps the genre-hopping/avoiding music they make means this is all the more possible. Through the albums, as a whole lineage – and I listened to all 4 in a row one Sunday – they feel so cohesive together, all this big universe that they have made their own. In a post-genre world, how does a band like Young Fathers fit in?

Finally, there’s the videos, shot almost all in non-widescreen, another incongruous but seemingly bold statement in a pushback against the general music ‘machine’. They are striking, from older ones such as Low’s washed-out colours, or the visual attack of Shame to the new album’s visceral I Saw or Tell Somebody, to the dry humour of Toy’s casting of children as leaders, despots and maniacs. As their music does, the visual medium shows us just how vibrant and full of ideas they are, making things they want, the way they want. And we can all celebrate that.

Sit back, give in to the music, and feel the joy.

Posted in Album of the Month

PJ Harvey – The Hope Six Demolition Project

Posted on by GuyHornsby

 

You wait for a bus and then a few come along at once. In agreeing to have PJ Harvey’s new album as May’s album of the month – I have long found her a singular and unflinching artist that’s made music that doesn’t seem to nod to any other artists – and then Radiohead release A Moon Shaped Pool forty-eight hours later. Music’s gain is confusion for this blog. For, as much as I love PJ, and have enjoyed The Hope Six Demolition Project‘s own character, it can’t but help have taken a back seat since I heard Burn The Witch.

But this is about the album of the month, and it’s still more than worth all our attention and review. Harvey burst onto the scene with The PJ Harvey Trio’s Dry in 1992, an angry, unafraid and powerful artist that put her own life and experience at the centre of her music. Despite her never giving much care to the mainstream’s accolades or attention, she flirted with it in the mid-00s, even garnering BRIT, Grammy and Mercury nominations (the former two, she never won), but is the only artist to have won the latter twice, with Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea, and then her previous LP, Let England Shake.

So, what does an am artist that’s been making music for 30 years have still to say? While Let England Shake drew parallels between previous world wars and the messy modern conflicts we have been dragged into, The Hope Six Demolition Project deals with a much larger focus, in reality it still addressed themes and topics that are as virulent and important as any she’s taken on over the years: poverty, deprivation, loss, race, class, and humanity. It crosses the pond to look at America (as she’s done before) and is a nakedly political record, perhaps addressing the issues in a way that a US artist couldn’t. And being Polly Harvey, it was no ordinary recording, with sessions taking place live in Somerset House as the public watched.

What is the album like? You get many of Harvey’s strongest suits – raw rock, piercing vocals and lyrics, confrontational themes and the ever presence of John Parish’s gruffness – and an unflinching gaze onto America’s most troubling issues. This has resulted in somewhat of a backlash over the pond, with residents of the Washington DC area referenced in the album and commentators both criticising her subject and her opinion. But provocation is what Harvey does, and across the eleven tracks you get an album and a message that’s clear. In The Community Of Hope’s critical words and The Ministry Of Defence’s jangling guitars and chorused vocals, fans will feel at home. It’s not just a single pace or style, with Chain Of Keys’ rumbling snares and heavy sax, while River Anacostia’s haunting wail overpowers everything else. There’s definite echoes of Stories from the City… on show, so it’ll be interesting to see if it can follow up that and its predecessor’s success and resonance. Single The Wheel (above) is the most accessible and catching record, but like many of PJ’s albums, it needs addressing as a sonic whole. That’s where the power lies.

As she gets older, perhaps the one criticism of Harvey’s canon is that as she addresses weighty and important issues in her music is that she gradually retreats herself from the centre of it. Perhaps she’s earned that right. Are these views her own? Is it simply a theme of the album? We will likely never know, but it doesn’t dim the power of her music, and most likely never will. We bandy ‘national treasure’ around too much, but while she’d never agree with it herself, I’m sure PJ Harvey deserves it more than many.