043/ Queasy listening: Geordie Greep announces himself
Three LPs in, Black Midi retire (on ‘indefinite hiatus’) and Greep goes solo, launching his New Sound debut with ‘Holy, Holy’ — and what a searing, brutal, six minute opening salvo this is.
This track ‘Holy, Holy’ needs to be checked out, though I have zero clue if I’m going to overall love Greep’s work or hate it. My first reaction is a sort of startled, impressed gasp. Hence sharing it here.
Greep already showed a destabilising ability to write ambitiously and inhabit troubled, unpleasant narrators. He did it effectively in Black Midi songs, enough that it helped put me off the band (my fault, not theirs) even though it’s a technique I also loved to employ, way back when.
Listening to ‘Holy, Holy’ in the darkness, as the tail-lights of the Black Midi juggernaut quickly recede, this Greep bloke could be a major fucking talent. He’s exceptionally musically literate, veers knowledgeably from prog to jazz to Latin rhythms, but can collate it all effortlessly. He’s unafraid of his vision. For example, it’s such a treat to hear a modern-day lead single kick off with a daft raging guitar solo, before any singing happens.
Also, percussion is back in, in a big way.
Geordie Greep — ‘Holy', Holy’ — Spotify link
For me, the phrase ‘Holy, Holy’ is a Beat-scene reference, before anything conventionally religious. My first thought, before we even engage with the song, is Ginsberg’s ‘Footnote to Howl’ —
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!
— and so on, you know, for a while.
Which ends up wholly, wholly appropriate for this monster, as it leans hard into Beat aesthetic, though more in a lascivious, self-deluded, whoring Charles Bukowski kind of jag, than Ginsberg’s convivial activist. The first half of ‘Holy, Holy’ is a man’s shared, boasted, immersion in his own domineering (worldwide!) sexual potency —
All the revolutionaries
All the Jihadis too
‘Round the world i’m holy
Do you know my name?
Of course you know my name
Everyone does, it’s true
It’s true, it’s true, it’s true that I’m known around here
The barmaids know my name
I’ve had them all before
You are new - I’ll have you too
It’s time to give in
He’s enraptured in the selling of himself, sexually, until the lurch into a separate, second section (spoiler alert) that reveals the braggadocio as transactional play-acting. The narrator hired a sex worker to supply him this fantasy. He’s not the grifter but the mark —
And I want you to tell me I’m a perfect dancer.
And I want you to tell me I smell great.
And I want you to make me look taller,
Could you kneel down the whole time?
How much would that cost?
I want you to put your hand on my knee,
Will that be alright?
I want you to look at me as if you’re lost,
How much will that cost?
This is so cunning: sour, theatrical, Trumpian, quite brilliant… and structurally, as well as tonally, rare in current English rock (says me, who doesn’t listen to very much English rock). Talking to NME, Greep says “the main theme of the record is desperation. You don’t hear an unreliable narrator but someone kidding themselves they have everything under control but they don’t.”
Thing is, Geordie Greep’s ‘Holy, Holy’ is a debut single. This is how he introduces himself.
I think such deft in-character exploration, abandonment, the sexual desperation, misogyny/self-loathing, for a mid-twenties upcoming indie rock artist (a BRIT School alumnus, no less, albeit an already well travelled one) is a courageous marvel (or perhaps an appalling mis-step, or both at once). I must ask some people smarter than me and less male. Right now my instinct is admiringly agog.
Musically (and in the video’s sartorial and setting vibes, for emphasis, he looks the part) it’s a punchy, maximalist, dramatic funk/prog thing, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg, but something of the intensity of Cardiacs’ Tim Smith, crooner-punk crossover singers like Jamie Lenman or Franz Nicolay, some dazzling piano, enough brass for a New Orleans funeral. The time-play in the first verse is outrageous and could derail the whole thing but doesn’t. The tenor ‘bom bom bom bom bom’ backing vocals during the middle-section guitar shred are laugh-out-loud perfect, and wink at us to keep it light, despite everything (actually, the backing vocal answering lines are doing this right through the song, joyously). Yet, in the end, still this thrilling chaos ride of a song remains ‘straight’ and ‘upbeat’ and rollicking enough to be a pop single that you can imagine sneaking a ton of radio play, if producers have the stomach for the complex sentiment.
Is it too much? Could be.
I would’ve loved to see Bellowhead’s Jon Boden lean this direction in his solo work, he’s got a similar ear for drama and arrangement, but he’s too good (ideologically — nowhere near enough skeeze). One artist I can imagine making something as vibey and compelling as this (with a big enough studio budget) is Electric Soft Parade’s Thomas White, currently playing drums with that Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall collaboration band The WAEVE. He’s got the chops, arrangement-wise, but again, Tom’s energy is far more Ginsberg, less Bukowski.
As I was writing this, Jim Bob just shared with me a terrific new Father John Misty tune ‘I Guess Time Makes Fools Of Us All’ and though it’s a lot mellower, it also has brassy groove, strong motifs, acerbic storytelling and it also briefly channels Allen Ginsberg in the lyric, to nod at the Beats. Oh wait, Marc is in the chat, saying how much he hates the Beats. I mean, I do often have a troubling time with Father John Misty (to the point of sometimes actively loathing his work) but this slaps. I’m in the right mood. Perhaps we’re about to have a trend of men artists exploring their uncomfortable world via the medium of a yacht rock revival.
Anyway, I waffle.
This is the most striking debut I’ve heard for ages, especially by a young British man. Hats off Geordie Greep, you maniac.
One YouTube commentator said: “Shirt and tie? He’s gone full Fripp.”
icymi —
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