Since winning the Mercury Prize in 2014 with their excellent debut album Dead, Young Fathers have continued to produce music of such a consistent inventiveness and strength. It is a bit of a puzzle to me that they have, as yet, not broken through to a much bigger audience. On their third album Cocoa Sugar they appeared to be tilting their sound towards being more commercial and radio friendly. With Heavy Heavy they make something of a return to their signature area built around pounding drum, three vocal front men basics, a mix of rants, spoken word and chanting. There is much to hear on Heavy Heavy that I would say is really great music well worth hearing. Rice and I Saw, are fabulous catchy tracks by anyone's estimation. Though there is often a sense they are never quite reaching what they are fully capable of. They do occasionally produce tracks like Ululation which by my books is a genius piece of music.
They are so invested in pushing the sonic envelope all the time that their albums are quite restless affairs, venturing and sweeping all over the place. Their eclectic mix of sources and influences has meant they are not an easily catagorisable band. In a record store you could find their music in any number of musical genres. Its never that clear to me what they are lyrically about. I guess there mysteriousness, and lack of any desire to pander to mainstream conventions just means its harder, but not impossible to understand where they are coming from. Which is a real shame because Heavy Heavy is a really strong fourth album with a grand sense of expansiveness as well as propulsively driven tracks. Well worthy of battering your lugs with anytime of day or night.
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