The debut solo record from the ex-Black Midi frontman is very much in its own head If Geordie Greep ’s run with Black Midi told us anything, it’s that he’d rather you not get too comfortable. The band’s three albums offered a confounding fusion of technical brilliance, gnarly imagery and proggy pomp that left you convinced you didn’t know the half of what was really going on. Emerging only months after their split was confirmed (in suitably confusing fashion), his debut solo record proves that, in that regard, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
READ MORE: Geordie Greep talks ‘The New Sound’ and Black Midi split: “I would have done it differently” Recorded between São Paulo and London during Black Midi’s final throes, ‘The New Sound’ is just as disorienting and discomfiting as Greep’s previous work, but it is tonally distinct. Here, in the company of more than 30 session musicians, he leans hard into Steely Dan smut, música popular brasileira and snaking rhythms. Add the lyrics about the imagined lives of loser men who, almost invariably, brag and sneer before being exposed as empty shells, and there’s a distinct lounge lizard sheen to it all.
But whenever you momentarily feel like you have a handle on something, it’s undercut by an outlandish turn of phrase, a shift in perspective or, halfway through the opening song ‘Blues’ , a kick drum salvo that rewires your brain. There is tension throughout between the quality.
