young fathers.
Heavy Heavy
© Ninja Tune, 2023
The Scottish group returns with their fourth album: their second for Ninja Tune and one of their strongest statements yet.
To categorize Scottish group Young Fathers as strictly hip hop is a vast understatement. With a combination of rap, indie rock, electronics, and Liberian and Nigerian vocal and rhythmic influences, Young Fathers have permeated indie circuits for almost 15 years. They’ve welcomed controversy and praise through albums like White Men Are Black Men Too and their Tape duology, winning Scottish Album of the Year with the second installment. They’ve even committed the sin of flirting with pop music structures on their last full length album, 2018’s Cocoa Sugar. All of this led to their graduation from the hip hop focused Big Dada imprint to Ninja Tune, its electronic parent label and indie staple. It doesn’t damage their case that the music is endlessly inventive, genre-defiant, and galvanized to an upper echelon.
All of this applies to Heavy Heavy as well. A boundless, joyful post-industrial romp, Young Fathers’ fourth album distills the group down to their strongest elements while immersing it in a deep, hazy murk and a knowing grin. The album’s first two tracks, “Rice” and “I Saw”, display Heavy Heavy’s MO from the jump: complex rhythms, snarky rap/sung lead vocals, industrial charm, and lyrics that convey a desire to better ourselves and or lives despite the frightening forces of the world against us.
This theme applies to the album as a whole. When announcing the album, Young Fathers have described the title Heavy Heavy as “... a nod to the natural progression of boys to grown men and the inevitable toll of living, a joyous burden, relationships, family…” So the goal is to convey that love of life against the immense pressure of living it. We can see this in Young Fathers’ lyrics and sonic palettes: their personal influences shine the brightest in the structure and rhythm, but sonic touchstones are sprinkled throughout. “Drum” carries a distinct flavor of Animal Collective circa Feels, and “Tell Somebody” encompasses the earnestness of Sigur Ros’ most gentle moments and the cacophonous grandiosity of 2010’s M83.
And yet, despite these notable points of familiarity, Young Fathers contorts them into forms that feel completely distinct. Take the hip hop leanings of lead single “Geronimo” and the chopped production of following track “Shoot Me Down”; rap is present, but there are so many layers of soul and blown-out rock on top that it becomes something entirely new. Young Fathers till the soil of their influences and produce a blossoming garden of alien fauna totally their own: a sonic allegory for how the things out of our control shape us into who we are. I guess that’s kinda the point.
All of this is to say that Heavy Heavy is a wholly unique listening experience, pulling reference points to create a snarling, glorious exhumation from start to finish. Young Fathers have always been boundless, but these genre-exploders have hit a new high in their quest to break molds. These heavy burdens have never felt so light.
- Aaron
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