One of the driving themes of Anthony Powell’s roman-fleuve, Dance to the Music of Time, is the contrast between those characters driven solely by power and those more in tune with life’s more sensual pleasures. Inevitably, time and fate catches up with each protagonist and the reader can ponder if their fates are justified or not. The New Sound, Geordie Greep’s debut solo album, often feels as if it is a rerun of Powell’s theme, soundtracked by a miscreant – and totally wired – Palm Court Orchestra.
Is The New Sound a tonic for these times? One hopes so: the album boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun not heard in a very long time. Maybe Associates were the last act to walk the line between the ridiculous and brilliant with such a teflon-coated aplomb.
Geordie Greep
Is the record an attempt to break away from preconceived ideas of what popular music should be? Let’s ask Geordie Greep. “Music can be so much more than learning to play the same as everybody else. It can be anything you want. It’s strange to me, to follow the dictates of what has ‘proven to be what people like’ about a particular kind of music. With recording The New Sound, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. And with every impulse I had, I was able to completely follow it through to its conclusion. Being in a band (black midi), we often have this ‘we can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it’s good to do something else, to let go of things.”
The resulting music is “all feel, not super relaxed, but liquid and propulsive and there is also an intense rigidity to it.” Greep is adept at adding words into this sonic cauldron. “The main theme of the record is desperation; you don’t hear an unreliable narrator but someone who is kidding themselves that they have everything under control, but they don’t.” All the lyrics for the songs “came really quickly,” some on the way to the recording session. Greep; “It was a case of, ‘Oh fuck, I’m going to have to sing something now.’ [Laughs.] You can plan out a narrative but it has to feel right.”
Themes of desperation or not, there is a tangible sense that the players loved playing the music. Nothing feels laboured or self-absorbed: the sounds are outward facing and inquisitive. The instrumental title track is a jazz-funk workout that could double as a soundtrack for a TV series or the intro music for a Broadway musical. Brass, wah-wah pedal and bass stabs, choruses and polyrhythms, all fizz and tumble around the place creating a sense of excitement and expectation. Tracks often start and end on a bang, never with a whimper or a fade out. ‘Terra’ squeals to a halt courtesy of some giddy horn playing and opener ‘Blues’ ends expertly, with the same abrupt bass squiggle as it began.
