Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy Review
Heavy Heavy is a deeply personal album that sounds like a step back into who Young Fathers are.
Young Fathers formed in Edinburgh 2008, Independently releasing their Debut EP Tape One in 2011. Two years later, now signed with the US based Label Anticon, we get a rerelease of the debut record, and a new offering, the band's Second EP, Tape Two, which went on to win the Scottish Album of the Year award. 2014 saw the bands first full Length record, Dead, released to much critical acclaim and this time walking away with the Mercury Prize. Little over a year later White Men Are Black Men Too arrived. Some were surprised not to see them back in the running to become the first band to retain the Mercury prize such was the strength of their follow up. A change in Label from Big Dada to Ninja Tune allowed for some breathing room after a flurry of releases, fans having to wait until 2018 to get their hands on Cocoa Sugar. The band again received positive reviews despite this being a more restrained and perhaps darker example of Young Fathers.
They’ve Previously toured with Massive Attack, Pusha T and Paul Weller, but you couldn’t realistically label them as Trip-Hop, Hip-Hop or Rock, Young Fathers often finding themselves pushed away by those very fans. It has to be more of an attitude that they carry which allures these acts to them. They want to make pop music, they love Hooks and Choruses but you'd be at a stretch to say you've heard them like this before. I often wonder whether each album is a means to create more material to flesh out and update their live show, the records acting in part as an advert for where the music really comes to life. Now some five years on from their last instalment, we finally get to meet the Fourth(ish) full length album in the catalogue, Heavy Heavy.
Heavy Heavy, a deeply personal album, sounds like a step back into who they are, finding a raw, free feeling again. Refining and celebrating the niche they have built for themselves. It is wonderfully ambiguous and feels like a positive move forward away from the frustrations they met in recording Cocoa Sugar. The phrase “Heavy Heavy” itself is never explicitly addressed across the album. Whether it relates to the state of the world, or the expectations of a new generation, a mood or feeling. That's all up to you to find. Kayus of the band says “You let the demons out and deal with it… Make sense of it after.”
After taking some time away to explore themselves, whether that be via becoming a parent and questioning their new role and responsibilities or literally by travelling and exploring their heritage. They are now back working all together in a basement with everything they could need on and ready. Everything possible again. Throughout their Catalogue Young Fathers have escaped becoming comfortably labelled as any particular genre. Too rocky for some, too hip hop for others. On Heavy Heavy nothing feels completely tied down, Jazzlike improvisations pulling them through Soul as well as Gospel. At points they touch upon euphoric walls of sound, ideally to be positioned in front of a glorious sunset.
The album is well paced, the energy transferred and never lost. The album is thrust along by the drums beating throughout the core of this record. This constant rhyhm allows space for the members of the band to weave themselves between each other, singing, shouting, whispering, screaming, whatever needs to happen to create their aural wall.
The album blows by in just about 33 minutes. All but two tracks stick under three minutes 30 and none touch 4. There'd be no time or space here to get bored or fatigued even if the tracks allowed for it. Each day another one taking its turn to earworm into your subconscious. The subtlety of the lyrics on this record may be something missed when listening to this album, at least for the first time around as it drives us to move to dance and enjoy it. At its centre this album explores what it is to be human, and looks for an emotional response from its listener. The lyrics themselves are emotional responses to the world around us, whether that be to family or something wider and more political. No matter what is happening on the large scale, we still have family, friends and can always choose to be good.
After the darkness of Cocoa Sugar, there seems to be far more brightness and life in Heavy Heavy. I’m not certain what genre it is they’re defining, but they are.