Review Summary: Young Fathers finally come into their own
Young Fathers have always seemed to me more exciting on paper than in execution. The uneasy amalgamation of styles coated in an uncanny, perverse atmosphere was always unsettled in mood and unique among its peers, but the impression left every time I went into one of their albums was always short-lived, vague, as though the Scottish trio hadn’t quite built up the songwriting chops to make their psychedelic-tinged, slightly nightmarish neo-soul vision leave anything other than a vague impression of moody color fading into the background, the only unitive element in a band that was more capable of being a hodgepodge novelty than anything deeper. Well, over a decade of working together seems to have finally paid off as Heavy Heavy sees the members of Young Fathers take their own disparate influences and bring them together into something with a consistent ear for effective songwriting and atmosphere anchored by impeccably crisp production, a unity anchored in the sounds Young Fathers have been working with since day one, but here brought together, heightened and honed into something more effective and, hopefully, long-lasting than anything they’ve put together since their inception as a band.
How key the production is to the success of Young Fathers’ latest is made intensely obvious from the word go: the album pulses throughout with an energy that feels only barely reined in, the percussive elements feeling intensely immediate and intimate, each element clearly defined and given its own space in the mix. The unsettled atmosphere that is pretty obviously Young Fathers’ hallmark at this point is communicated through little brushstrokes of industrial pulse and drone as sudden dips into lyrical violence keep anything from ever becoming too comfortable. Even the energy pulsing through the whole thing seems to border on the edge of hysteria at times, as the relentless pulse of the faster tracks approaches the manic, the ecstatic.
But despite the slightly uncanny mood running like a current underneath Heavy Heavy, I was a bit surprised to find just how much this album carries an atmosphere of affirmation and vitality. The lyrics are as oblique and open to interpretation as ever, and often veer into the bizarre darkness of their previous efforts, but when those exuberant shouts of “THESE HANDS CAN HEAL!” burst out all over the dizzying whirlwind of percussion and handclaps, the effect of the moment was electric. Between moments like that and the howling ululations of…well…Ululation, which could have come across as a shamefaced rejection from the Lion King soundtrack if not for the totally-played-straight buzz of the synthesizer rising and falling throughout, Young Fathers have found an inimitable synthesis of the ecstatic joyfulness of gospel music and the unsettling nature of the very idea of ecstatic abandon.
The plunge into the subterranean dub techno in the introduction to Shoot Me Down, the neon-church organ-and-strings anthem of Tell Somebody, the abandonment of most of their hip-hop influence in favor of that off-kilter neo-gospel quality, it all manages to be simultaneously Young Father’s most sonically diverse and yet musically coherent album. It’s as if they’ve recognized that by cranking the dial on both their pop-appeal and the prickly, creepy undercurrent running throughout, they’d only be leaning into their strengths. That the band have managed to do both consistently, not only throughout the album but often simultaneously in a single song, able to run two disparate threads together so effortlessly into their unique tapestry of sound testifies to their strengths as masters of form and texture.
It’s rare that an album that builds this much hype from the moment of release should have any real staying power; often the immediate blast of novelty and excitement doesn’t hold up to deeper analysis and everything that once appeared new and vital is revealed to be concealing a lack of depth that makes the album’s legacy relatively short-lived. Whether that’s going to be the case on Heavy Heavy remains to be seen, the lyrics that seem to revel in their cryptic qualities while still relying heavily on cliché might be a warning sign that this isn’t going to hold up as well as might first be supposed. But for now, its hard to imagine not being moved by the almost-manic pulse of these neo-gospel anthems. Whether Young Fathers will seek to further refine the sensibilities they’ve been working with since early in their career, or whether they’ll need to veer farther into unexpected directions in order to keep growing as artists remains to be seen as well. But for now, Heavy Heavy has managed to capture something both unique within the broader world of Pop music, while remaining true to the soundscapes Young Fathers have been playing around in for some time now.
