Review | Geordie Greep – The New Sound

Label: Rough Trade Records

By George Ward

With ‘The New Sound,’ black midi frontman Geordie Greep takes a radical step in a new direction for the boldest, most theatrical and most entertaining album of the year.

With the help of over 30 session musicians and recorded in São Paulo and London, ‘The New Sound’ is full of fascinating influences, from Brazilian jazz to funk to post-punk to bossa nova. It is wildly unpredictable and somehow manages to satisfy both black midi fans and those who had grown weary of the relentlessness of their sound.

Opener ‘Blues’ was released as a single a few days ago and it’s not hard to see why. The track eases black midi fans in, with its impossibly frenetic guitar lines, buzzing like mosquitoes from the get go. We even have Morgan Simpson, making his presence unavoidably known with one of the most unhinged drum performances of his career.

With ‘Terra,’ the ‘new sound’ Greep is experimenting with becomes much clearer, with an immediate change of pace, bossa nova groove and gorgeous jazz instrumentation. Producer Seth Evans (HMLTD, black midi) here proves that he is just as comfortable handling the bright and lush instrumentation of this track as he is with the chaos of the opener.

Hearing Greep’s voice over such a groovy, unserious instrumental is incredibly refreshing and he proves instantly that he has the vocal capabilities to lead an album of this grandeur. It’s easy to get lost in the breezy, jazzy sound, but pay attention to Greep’s tale of ‘the museum of human suffering’ and its famine victims and abandoned fetuses. The imagery is sharp and every track tells a compelling, pointed and witty story.

Much like ‘Hellfire’, this album is filled with despicable characters. From ‘Holy, Holy’s pathetic desperation of a man trying to cling onto his reputation to the corporate sleaze of ‘Walk Up’, with its ‘fish fingers shaking hands’, boardrooms and company books, Greep’s writing is hilarious and every character tangible.

On top of his tasteful, warm and clean production, Evans‘ vocals feature on the aptly named ‘Motorbike’. It is a hard task to compete with the expressive theatricality of Greep’s voice, but Evans handles the task masterfully, moving from smooth crooner to restless hero.

When the instrumental revs its engine and the track recklessly speeds its ways down various narrow alleyways, we find ourselves at the most exhilarating point of the record. It’s so much fun being taken on the journey of the narrator finally escaping his life and so exciting to lose yourself in a real concrete story. “That’s the story they recount every Sunday lunch, to anyone interested or not,” Evans sings.

On the final stretch of the record, Greep looks inwardly. The gorgeous ‘As If Waltz’ effectively works as a list of everything the character longs for. His needs range from romantic to pathetic to concerning to sweet again, all concluding with the bittersweet “to be with you more than an hour”, perhaps again using prostitution as a vessel to explore self-consciousness, insecurity and longing.

The final section is incredibly beautiful and, as the instrumental swells, each and every one of the countless session musicians are felt, from harpsichords to backing choirs.

‘The Magician’ is the most ambitious and emotionally effective track Greep has written yet. At 12 minutes long, the track beautifully weaves from verse to verse, with Greep’s painfully honest and raw lyricicism gradually bringing all of the album’s themes together, making complete sense of the chaos.

The track explores the idea of self, the lies we tell each ourselves and each other, others’ perceptions of us and the ways in which we hide from them. It is romantic, poetic, theatrical and perfectly handled. The track is impossibly grand, with gorgeous flourishes leading us effortlessly to the magnificent, emotional climax.

As Greep’s cover of ‘If You Are But A Dream’ closes the record, tastefully acting as an epilogue after the grand finale preceding it, I was left feeling very satisfied. The album is filled with genres, instruments, and new sounds, but never feels cluttered, instead giving itself space to breathe and patience to explore each new avenue.

Even more so than with black midi, Geordie Greep’s capabilities as a frontman are astounding, with his sincere belting vocals a far cry from his dark post-punk experimentation of 2019. It is so refreshing hearing an album like this, unafraid of pretentiousness and theatricality and willing to truly immerse us in its fascinating world.