Track Reviews // Black Midi - Talking Heads

Double a-side single w/ ‘Crow’s Perch’ (Rough Trade Records, May 17th 2019)

Black Midi are a frenetic, enigmatic four-piece from South London whose path to the top of the scene (recently signed for Rough Trade after a trans-Atlantic bidding war and months of speculating) has blossomed in the dark of the venues they’ve blessed and shunned the glare of online over-exposure.

Stirring up more pre-debut buzz than contemporaries like Shame, Temples and HMLTD, their relative absence from the saturated hype machines and social spheres has only made those lucky enough to be obliterated by their live shows hearts’ grow fonder and hungrier. Scattered interviews, glimmering live performances (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMn1UuEIVvA) and mind-bending demos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8fBopo31vQ&t=772s) are being gleefully deciphered and expanded into album rumours and lyrical concepts by the malnourished but growing fanbase as I write.

Their second major single finds more idiosyncratic, angular grooves and jangly math-rock experimentation. The tune has an aggressive post-punk danciness that accompanies the David Byrne-esque surreal sprechgesang vocal from Geordie Greep; one interpretation of the title. But it also echoes Samuel Beckett’s 1963 ‘Play’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2QJ0FYE3pw) – wherein ‘talking heads’ sit in funeral urns forming a babbling, logorrheic chorus. The aposiopetic spit-and-choke stutter of Greep's ‘Talking Heads’ is explosive – firing out stabs of lo-fi energy and then lapsing into subdued catatonia.

Cameron Picton and Matt Kelvin join Greep on bass and lead, the jagged melodies plaiting in and out of each other causing a head spinning swing between harmony and dissonance akin to Deerhoof (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkpjZXgetDU) or Norwegian newcomers Pom Poko (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnyAC4HxXNE).

But on this single its Morgan Simpson’s tireless, furious drumming that lights the fire under the cerebral guitarwork and gives us some of London’s most exciting sticks playing that’s out there in the streams. The kick in the door brashness sounds like a Danny Brown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L4JnAuW00k) beat and has Simpson playing like Zach Hill in videos online. The blistering technicality has every other aspect in the mix marionette dancing around the kit like Billy Cobham or Dennis Chambers.

The persistent trickle of such quality music throws Black Midi’s disaffected weariness with prevalent media channels into sharp relief. The sheer attack of skill, intelligence and emotion in Talking Heads shows a band thrilled to be writing in this time, with these people; not pre-jaded by expectation or hyper-accessible celebrity.

For anyone who loves it when sad, ol’ rock ‘n’ roll catches a boot up its bollocks from the new brash and bewildering sonic champs; these are worth keeping your ear on.