Scottish trio Young Fathers launched their career like fireworks with Dead, in 2014, an explosive, colorful, smoking album. Mercury Prize under his arm, he has since continued his ascent to the stars, first propelling himself into the European charts with White Men Are Black Men Too (2015), then North Americans with Cocoa Sugar (2018). Listening to the fourth album, Heavy Heavyreleased on Friday, the whole planet should now expect to see Young Fathers shine brightly for many years to come.
Yes, it’s that good. The wall of sound built in the Edinburgh studio by Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings is erected here with sounds from all over the place musical styles: afrobeat, pop, ecclesiastical, rock, industrial, techno, rap, house, soul.
Those who follow Young Fathers’ career will say it has always been that way. TRUE. But on this disc, we feel that the three artists are in full control of their instruments and what they want to offer us. This is how the sound layers add up, overlap, without you feeling that it’s flattened, too much, or simply placed to dazzle. Everything here takes a place that becomes essential in the construction of compositions, complicated, major.
If we could find the previous albums linear – and with some downtime –, here, it is not the case: none of the ten tracks leaves the listener any respite. It happens everywhere. A voice-over, an organ, a few violins, then we hear a choir, or even a few piano notes, a score spoken word or tribal cries.
With Heavy HeavyYoung Fathers is reaching musical maturity, no less.
With such rich music, listening to the subjects used is simplified. Place of migrants, toxic masculinity, systemic racism, police – and murderous – violence, search for identity, capitalist system without future; heavy and current themes are treated. And they travel towards our ears on rhythms of such efficiency that it is impossible not to sing, dance, tap our feet and, above all, to hope for a passage of the trio in the Montreal sky somewhere this year – nothing in this direction for the moment on our radars, but we cross our fingers.
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Heavy Heavy
Young Fathers
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