Young Fathers – White Men Are Black Men Too

Many would say that winning the Mercury Music Prize is an ill-fated blessing in disguise. Pressures of recreating that success on your second album/bettering yourself can become an impossible plight. This is not the case for Young Fathers. White Men Are Black Men Too sounds unlike anything coming out of the UK at the moment with its bold influence of rap, rock and soul; this is an album that constantly pushes the envelope of experimentalism and takes pop music to a whole new level. “Young Fathers are breaking out of the ghetto,” writes the group’s Alloysious Massaquoi in reference to the various genres the group have been placed in over the years. Rock, pop, hip-hop, soul and electro have all been suggested but compared to the Mercury Prize winning album Dead, White Men… is truly a fascinating collage of experimental pop sounds that delivers on numerous levels.  

‘Still Running’ and ‘Shame’ throw us straight into this nightmarish lullaby with the use of the pleasant sounding xylophone, lo-fi drum machines and preacher-man like singing; you can almost imagine the vocalists with their closed fists on their hearts hollering to the heavens above. This is a theme which runs throughout the album. On ‘27’ Massaquoi and Kayus Bankoleexpress the group’s vocal dynamic as they switch the tempo, harmony and lines of the song with each other, with a light hearted reggae-tinged tune in the background. ‘Rain or Shine’ has an unsettling swirl of organs and percussion intertwined with the political critique of the pursuit of religion. ‘Sirens’ is where the album, for me, shifts in tone and is almost the start of the album again. ‘Old Rock N Roll’ is the racially charged confession of the album: “I’m tired of playing the good black/I’m tired of blaming the white man, his indiscretions don’t betray him.”

‘Nest’ is one of the stand out tracks for me on the album, where a beautiful coming together of strings and choral harmonies really show the potential of the band that their music really does have the capability of attracting a sizeable audience. What I love most about this album is that the Mercury win hasn’t made the group or the record label lurch towards the mainstream market. This is an honest representation of a band and their idea of what a pop album should be and how to reinterpret the future sound of pop, rock and hip-hop.

White Men Are Black Men Too is available from Amazon and iTunes.