Bleep

“Life is contrast,” said Young Fathers after releasing the first track from their newly-reunited recording sessions in 2022. Coming just under five years after the previous Cocoa Sugar, their fourth album Heavy Heavy exemplifies this wisdom perfectly, capturing life’s “tenderness in toil”. Calling back to the raw delivery of their breakthrough debut DEAD but with new eyes, the Edinburgh trio channel lo-fi DIY aesthetics and passionate emotionality into their ever expanding visions.

The energised performances of Young Fathers’ “uninhibited, open-ended studio sessions” in their basement space come through with a full bodied, exhilarating sound. Yet however you interpret the title of Heavy Heavy, from depicting suffocating times to visceral production, there’s a lot of light to be found across the album. ‘Rice’ opens on a communal note, its metallic scrapyard-folk rhythms bathed in sunlight, evolving into a roaring chorus of claps, crashes, and rejoicing vocals. Grandiose strings in ‘Tell Somebody’ form cinematic textures ruptured by rapturous drums, echoed in ‘Geronimo’ where a slinking, syrupy groove blissfully reaches explosive levels.

It’s precisely these contrasts that Heavy Heavy revels in, its gritty textures feeling right at home with brightness and warmth. The pneumatic, jackhammering kicks of ‘Shoot Me Down’ are underlined by sweet organ chords and divine, pleading vocals. ‘Be Your Lady’ opens with piano-led, charismatic intimacy, before descending sharply into heavy beat gymnastics that shift through emotional microcosms highlighting the lyrics, “I wanna be your lady, forgetting I’m the man.”

With a delicately thrilling balance between heavy and light, Heavy Heavy provides a refreshing take on Young Fathers’ uncompromising sound.