Geordie Greep
The New Sound
Rough Trade Records [2024]
“A kaleidoscopic journey of genre-bending chaos and melodic cohesion—Greep’s The New Sound is as unpredictable as it is captivating.”
Album Overview: Back in early August black midi frontman Geordie Greep unceremoniously let slip that the band was “indefinitely over,” closing the book—at least for now—on a group that burned bright and hot during their roughly six-year existence. Close on the heels of that announcement, however, came another: Greep’s debut solo album, The New Sound. Given his prominent role in black midi and the new record’s on-the-nose title, the question at the front of most fans’ minds is how Greep’s solo debut will stack up alongside his former project. In other words: how different will a Geordie Greep album be from a black midi one?
Musical Style: The answer to that above question is “very different in some ways, and not so much in others.” Stylistically the album runs all over the map, from cabaret torch songs and Latin-infused jazz fusion to theatrical art pop and knotty prog rock. That may sound like a chaotic hodgepodge, and in some ways, it is; but it’s also surprisingly cohesive, especially with Greep’s distinctive vocal style and character-study lyrics tying it all together. The album creates its own strange, unsettling world, one that gives Greep a variety of backdrops against which he can stage his surrealist narratives.
Evolution of Sound: The main difference in sound between black midi and The New Sound is the sheer variety of genres Greep incorporates. The complexity, heaviness, and unpredictability of black midi is still present, but are less tied to the rock idiom. The Latin and jazz influences are the most surprising new additions to the palette, but they work well with Greep’s often dramatic vocal delivery. At times, the expanded instrumental variety threatens to overload the tracks even more than black midi’s cacophonous sound did; but since the songs on The New Sound tend to be a bit more melodic, there’s usually a hook or recognizable theme to carry the song forward.
Artists with Similar Fire: While black midi and the other “Brixton Windmill bands” like Black Country, New Road and Squid are obvious points of comparison, there are other touchstones The New Sound draws on for inspiration. There are some similarities to the Adrian Belew-fronted iterations of King Crimson in the heavier sections, while the album’s flair for the dramatic and avant-garde calls to mind the Slapp Happy/Henry Cow collaborations Desperate Straights and In Praise of Learning. The whimsical madness of Cardiacs can be felt in some of the album’s more unhinged moments, and the Latin and jazz elements even call to mind some of Steely Dan’s more adventurous material.
Pivotal Tracks: Opener “Blues” is nothing of the sort, at least musically, featuring some proggy intertwining guitars and unpredictable song structures that build to a frenetic jazz-fusion climax. “Terra” and first single “Holy, Holy” bring in some of the Latin elements, while “Walk Up” feels like an alternate universe in which Donald Fagen guested on an even more twisted version of Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (“Through A War” likewise feels indebted to Steely Dan, with its shimmering guitars, jazzy piano chords, and horn charts). The album takes a slight detour with “Motorbike,” which features vocals from Seth Evans of the band HMLTD, who sounds a bit like former Black Country, New Road singer Isaac Wood. Penultimate track “The Magician” is a twelve minute slow-burn epic that combines orchestral accompaniment with Greep’s noisy guitar and leads into the nostalgic closer “If You Are But A Dream,” a seemingly sincere traditional pop tune that concludes the album in a similar fashion to “Goodnight” on The Beatles.
Lyrical Strength: Most of the album’s eleven tracks are built around first-person narratives, allowing Greep to inhabit the protagonist of each song and talk directly to the other characters. It’s a style he started developing in black midi, especially on their last album Hellfire. Thematically the songs often focus on narrators who put on a polished exterior, but whose private lives hide deep insecurities, unusual sexual proclivities, and violent impulses. Greep’s vocal acrobatics are the perfect vehicle for these unsettling tales, giving them a feeling of authenticity that meshes perfectly with the music.
BLACK MIDI REVIEW HISTORY
Hellfire (2022) / Cavalcade (2021) / Schlagenheim (2019)
GEORDIE GREEP LINKS
Website | Instagram | Bandcamp | Rough Trade Records
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