#11 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Young Fathers

January 21, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Here we are on the bubble of the Top 10 of 2023 with Young Fathers, who were in this exact same position with their phenomenal Cocoa Sugar a short five years ago. Heavy Heavy is the band’s fourth full-length, and it’s every bit as good as Cocoa Sugar.

Not much has changed with the band in the space between these two albums. They still hail from Edinburgh, Scotland, and they are still a trio of men who have now been making music together for 15 years: Alloysious Massaquoi (born in Liberia, moved to Edinburgh when he was 4), Kayus Bankole (born in Edinburgh to Nigerian parents) and Graham 'G' Hastings (born in Edinburgh to Scottish parents). Having been writing and performing together since they were teenagers, the three men dance and spar and finish each other’s musical thoughts like brothers. Watch their KEXP Live Performance from earlier this year to see how they play off each other – the first three songs of the short set see each of them take the lead at various points.

Heavy Heavy is only a short 33 minutes long, with 10 get-in-get-out 3-minute tracks. It’s heavenly. Whereas Cocoa Sugar saw the band adopting more pop-song qualities that allowed them to secure a wider audience, Heavy Heavy has them maturing those same ideas into the best they can be. The song “I Saw,” shown above, achieves a sound somewhere between TV on the Radio and Prodigy. The other video they’ve released, for the song “Tell Somebody,” is an odd choice for a video. It’s gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but the song feels more like a transition, and bridge between the highlights of the album, “Drum” (song #3) and “Geronimo” (song #5).

When I first heard Young Fathers, I wasn’t sure where they should be stored in my musical file cabinet. Over these last two albums, they’ve shifting up to the front of the drawer that features political rock, hip hop, and hard hitting dance artists. (No such drawer exists – maybe that’s the metaphor I should be painting here: they’ve been moved to a musical drawer all their own). Even if you only kinda liked Cocoa Sugar, I urge you to listen to Heavy Heavy. It contains a half-hour of danceable, singable, catchy as all get-out music that you’ll want to repeat again and again.

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#11 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — Young Fathers

January 21, 2019 by Royal Stuart

Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers

Turns out We Were Promised Jetpacks aren’t the only Scottish band in this year’s Top 31. Introducing Young Fathers, a trio of young men out of Edinburgh. Cocoa Sugar is their third album, but the first I’ve heard, and it blends rap, R&B and rock n’ roll into a pastiche of sound that defies convention. Amazingly, this album is apparently the most accessible of them all, according to Pitchfork. It does take a few listens to sink in, but eventually that light bulb turns on and it’s so worth it.

The band’s tonal divergence comes from the diversity of the men in the band. Alloysious Massaquoi is a Liberian who moved to Edinburgh at the age of four; Kayus Bankole was born in Edinburgh, to immigrant parents from Nigeria, and spent many years living in the US and Nigeria in his early years; and Graham "G" Hastings was the only member of the band to have been born, raised, and remained in Edinburgh. The three began performing together as teens. It’s impossible to know who is responsible for what on the record, such is their musical acuity.

Sometimes sounding like TV on the Radio, I think the best way to define the band’s sound is “as if the Red Hot Chili Peppers decided to not make commercial drivel and instead veered into the even more strange after their seminal 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.” (They both even have “Sugar” in the name!) The video above, for the song “In My View,” is the most traditionally catchy song on the album, so if you don’t like it, you probably won’t like the rest of the album. I had this song stuck in my head for weeks this past summer. You can watch videos for two other album tracks, to get a good sense of how the band shifts gears: “Toy” and “Lord” are both great in their own way.

Give this album a listen — I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. On the fourth or fifth run through, think of RHCP, and tell me if you don’t hear it, too. It’s there, just under the surface, and once it occurred to me I couldn’t not think it. I love how music works in the brain.

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12. Loner by Caroline Rose
13. Big Red Machine by Big Red Machine
14. I’ll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists
15. The More I Sleep the Less I Dream by We Were Promised Jetpacks
16. Joy as an Act of Resistance by IDLES
17. Hell-On by Neko Case
18. Superorganism by Superorganism
19. Living in Extraordinary Times by James
20. Thank You for Today by Death Cab for Cutie
21. Black Panther: The Album by Kendrick Lamar
22. Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) by Thom Yorke
23. Merrie Land by The Good, the Bad & the Queen
24. Room 25 by Noname
25. WARM by Jeff Tweedy
26. God's Favorite Customer by Father John Misty
27. Vessel by Frankie Cosmos
28. For Ever by Jungle
29. Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
30. Remain in Light by Angélique Kidjo
31. This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet by Moonface

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#18 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31

January 13, 2018 by Royal Stuart

The Underside of Power by Algiers

And now for something completely different. Algiers, from Atlanta, Georgia, blend a number of seemingly unrelated influences into inciteful, politically motivated, upbeat and most times angry rock and roll. They occupy the very tiny space in the center of the Venn diagram between TV on the Radio, The Dirtbombs, Gil Scott Heron and southern gospel.

The Underside of Power is the band’s second album. Their eponymous debut came out in 2015 and while it appears to have been critically acclaimed, I had not heard of the band until John in the Morning played them a few months back. Regardless of whether you like this music, it definitely calls attention to itself. The clash of sounds does its job beautifully, making you sit up and take action, even if that action is to change the station.

Give the album’s title song a listen above for an example of how they sound. Some of the songs on the album are slower, piano-led numbers with dark overtones, and some go the opposite way: hard, fast and loud guitar and drum-laden punk rock anthems. When reviewing the band’s debut album in 2015, Willamette Week called them “dystopian soul,” which sums their sound up perfectly, and puts them in a genre all their own.

“Dystopian” and “soul” are not words you can usually assign to one band or one sound, but Algiers manage to pull it off with aplomb. If you find yourself intrigued, I recommend reading this All Songs Considered article, where the band breaks down each song on the album, with references and background provided. There’s even an “influences” playlist at the end that is jam packed with interesting things.

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19. What Now by Sylvan Esso
20. 50 Song Memoir by The Magnetic Fields
21. Plunge by Fever Ray
22. DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar
23. Capacity by Big Thief
24. The Tourist by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
25. CCFX EP by CCFX
26. Woodstock by Portugal. The Man
27. MASSEDUCTION by St. Vincent
28. On the Spot by Hot 8 Brass Band
29. A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs
30. Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, & James McAlister
31. A Moment Apart by Odesza

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September 10, 2013 by Royal Stuart

Looks like TV on the Radio (HOW DO THEY NOT HAVE THEIR OWN ACTUAL WEBSITE?!) have a new album coming, but it‘s still not clear when. “Million Miles” will be on it, though.