To fervent followers of outlier rock trio Black Midi, a breakup courtesy of drifting musical interests might not have come entirely out of the blue. The brilliance of the group’s triptych of studio albums, from 2019 to 2022, seemingly came from the ancient alchemy of three (well, formerly four) highly proficient and creative individuals pulling in different directions – and there’s only so long that the luminous sparks of such chemical reactions can burn. When a collaborative process burns so bright, however, you do often wonder just how much the members will thrive when they go solo. As Black Midi’s shredding, tetchy, enigmatic frontman Geordie Greep readies his debut solo album The New Sound, you have to wonder: how will a whole album made entirely in his eccentric image go down? Well…
Calling a first solo album that certainly implies a clean break with the past. Whilst there are tropes and sounds that will be familiar to Black Midi fans, Greep’s quest for ‘The New Sound’ sees him voyaging wild-eyed into new waters that would have, at best, seemed unlikely to be fully, fully explored with his previous group. Salsa! Samba! MPB! ECM-style jazz! Noodly, noodly melodic prog-rock! Zappa! The Dan! Chansons! Showtunes! It’s all here.
Of course, people love to decry that there is no truly new guitar music, and that everything is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. Whilst it’s easy to be sucked into this opinion, Greep’s radical cannon of disparate influences shows that something truly novel can be created by recontextualising the past. It’s an ultimately hopeful venture, and Greep’s enthusiasm is infectious.
At its core, this album is defined by its open-hearted sense of adventure, as Greep tries all sorts of strange brews and infusions throughout its runtime. It was recorded over a 9 month period, across three countries (Brazil, USA and the UK) and three continents, and you can’t help but feel that this unique incubation period has shaped the globe-spanning smorgasbord on show. Lead single ‘Holy, Holy’ is this in microcosm. Sparkling yacht rock guitars with an arrogant swagger are married with a sweltering series of latin horn crescendos, a la a Willie Colón salsa, and Greep’s writhing goblin croon. It’s an audacious yet precocious mix, a rock music Frankenstein built from the unlikeliest components, but the grandiose and maximal phenomenon of The New Sound makes each influence not only functional but feel a vital part of the patchwork.
The title track is a collage of Sharrock jazz guitar brushstrokes and rhythmic fragments, a more focused version of what Greep has been playing in his recent live shows, whilst the fantastic ‘Blues’ is a frenetic and angular rock song that sees his sprechstimme delivery put to devilish use. Meanwhile, ‘If You Are But A Dream’ is a show-tune closer contorted into something all-the-more uncanny by the authentically weird presence of its writer. Every song here offers its own unique world, each one fantastical. It’s not just the music, though, as Greep’s lyrics add another layer of intrigue to the tantalising ’New Sound’. He loves to write about vulgar and larger-than-life characters, and he loves to match the sonic tempest with similarly strange and twisted imagery. In many ways, this is a continuation of his Hellfire lyrics, but here his authorial voice is even more honed, distinct, distinguished.
“Have you seen a woman give birth to a goat? That’s what courage looks like,” he snarls on ‘Through A War’, as the song’s narrator’s stream-of-consciousness frontline dispatch gets madder and madder, whilst the song ‘Bongo Season’ is ushered in with the irreverent opening line: “two mice commit harakiri in the corner of my room”.
Soaring to new heights on his solo debut, Geordie Greep delivers on his brief of crafting a ‘New Sound’ that is somehow bolder, stranger and more accessible than his work with Black Midi. Considering that band’s place at the vanguard of experimental rock music over the past five years, this is a remarkable feat.
