Since this weekend is apparently going to be a total washout weather-wise (still better than being at the office), thought I’d grab another gold medal in my in house Olympics to tell you about another band I’ve been digging on lately, Young Fathers. I found them as part of my periodic perusing of the Mercury Prize nominees — the UK’s list of best acts year to year, which similar to our Grammys often is a mess of poppy nonsense that otherwise obscures a few gems buried underneath. It takes some digging — for every Coldplay and U2 nomination there is to push past (and other British obsessions like Elbow and PJ Harvey, who win seemingly whenever they put something out), I’ve found some really good stuff here over the years — Badly Drawn Boy’s debut, Turin Brakes’, the Doves’, Tom McRae’s — to warrant the effort. (I do the same with the Canadian version, the Polaris Prize, in case you’re looking for other ways to join the hunt rather than rely on yours truly.)
So I first listened to them when they won the prize in 2014, surprising other media darlings like Damon Albarn and FKA twigs (as well as others I actually liked, such as Nick Mulvey’s, Jungle’s, and Royal Blood’s debuts, all of which landed on my best of list). For whatever reason it didn’t click at the time (I was so young and naive then…), but it started to with their album the following year, White Men are Black Men Too, which showcased the trio’s mix of Massive Attack-style electro and hip hop and TV on the Radio’s wide-ranging sonics, harmonies, and dissonance (before they got terrible). Scotland isn’t the first place you’d expect to see a hip hop act spring from (or the fiftieth for that matter), and it doesn’t sound like you’d expect (Sean Connery shouting at a passerby comes to mind), but it’s a pleasant surprise once unearthed.
Frontman Alloysious Massaquoi is a vocal chameleon — sometimes sounding like Pharrell, other times crooning in a lovely falsetto — while Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings tap in and out with rougher, more accented lines to balance things out. It works more times than not — tracks like “Shame,” “Rain or Shine,” “Nest,” and “John Doe” on White Men showcase the aforementioned references nicely (as does “Voodoo in my Blood” from the following year, which found them formally pairing with Massive), while songs like “I Heard,” “Come to Life,” “Only Child,” and “Mr. Martyr” are solid ones from Tape Two. I still prefer those albums (and Tape One) to their prize-winning Dead, but tracks like “Low” and “Get Up” are both winners from there, and the album does grow on you over time. The band has a new album coming out later this year (9 March) and the latest single “In My View” has me excited to see what else is there. In the meantime, check out a sampling I’ve assembled to get you ready:
We’ll close with a couple odds and sods from the week and mostly keep with the theme of the post (either Scottish or esoteric hip hop), starting with the former and the latest single from fellow Scotsmen Franz Ferdinand whose latest album dropped Friday and has been running on repeat over the weekend. It’s a largely upbeat affair — still not as irresistibly infectious as their classic debut, opting for more of a disco flavor than that one’s guitar-based fire, but better so far than their last offering, 2013’s Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action. One of the winners is this one, “Lazy Boy,” which follows on the heels of the previous single, the equally tasty title track, both of which hearken back to that debut’s fury. I’m looking forward to seeing them live again in a couple months — start a party in your living room in the meantime:
Next, we’ll hit on the latter piece of the theme (hippity hop from surprising places) and the latest from Beach Fossils who dropped another pretty, blissed out dream of a song this week (do they record any other kind?), this one a cover of baby-faced Swedish rapper (that’s right — Sweden has rappers too!) Yung Lean. It’s right in line with the rest of the band’s stuff, which as my eight readers know is well loved by Bobby Sunshine. Check it out here:
And we’ll close with something unrelated, an article commemorating the 20th anniversary of Pearl Jam’s Yield, which as the author argues has aged well over the years and remains an underappreciated album by the tireless legends, particularly the closing track “In Hiding.” (It’s also the latest evidence I am OAF…) Put this one on while you read the article and see if you can keep your concentration by the time Ed Ved gets to the chorus. Enjoy!