Hi, everyone. Greepthony Greeptano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of the new Geordie Greep record, The New Sound.

UK guitarist, songwriter, singer, composer, band leader, Geordie Greep, who at one point was one-third of the famed avant-prog and experimental rock outfit, Black Midi. To the dismay of many fans, the band came to a unceremonious hiatus just earlier this year. And, strangely, not too long after that announcement came news that Greep here had a new solo album on the way – a record that frankly sounds a bit too groomed and buttoned up to have not been under wraps for at least a minute, as the writing and performances on this project are thrilling, are visceral, are incredible, the band chemistry across this thing is amazing and near flawless, which is mind-blowing, considering there were about 30 session musicians employed across the length of this album. Not to mention the progressions of all of these tracks are very fluid and well-formed, which is surprising given just how the wild narrative and musical changes that a lot of these tracks undergo within the span of 3 or 6 or 12 minutes.

In a nutshell, to explain The New Sound, I will say it is the most wiry, tangled and intense jazz rock you can imagine, set to the manic inner monologues of a man with a very overactive imagination and libido. This record contains some of the biggest delusions of grandeur and sexual deviance I have heard anyone utter into a microphone. I think the only thing keeping them from sounding as insane as they actually are is the extremely extravagant rock music underscoring all of it, which really does give the lyrical content of this album a fantastical edge that just reads as beyond reality.

So much of the music and storytelling on this record just feels like it's couched in such extreme hyperbole, maybe in an attempt to make some pretty pitiful moments of heartbreak and romantic desperation seem a bit more palatable. Strangely, I'm reminded of the new Joker movie in a way, Follie a Deux, which is not a diss, mind you, as horrible as that movie is. But I find on this album that Greep is engaged in this similarly demented escapism that seems employed as a way of avoiding a nasty reality, which in the case of this album, it seems like some personal regrets as well as just the mundane existence of being an adult, where you have a stove and potholders and obligations and a reputation and a need to keep up appearances.

It really displays adulthood in a way as a prison of sorts. As a result, the protagonist of this record begins to really imagine himself being more interesting and being cooler than he actually is, which then leads to him spiraling into all of this compounding shame and self-loathing that is wrapped in this fear that he is not going to be remembered into the future, that despite all of his efforts in the grander scheme of things, he doesn't really matter.

If you printed the lyrics of this album out and handed them over to some of the world's top psychologists, I imagine they would have to compile them into a new disorder for the DSM, which, okay, maybe that statement is a bit over the top, but I do want to make clear that The New Sound here is really quite the statement and is truly Greep upping the ante on a lot of what we've heard him contribute to many a Black Midi record thus far, especially on Hellfire, where he had this tendency to embody these very strange, over-the-top egotistical characters.

Like a lot of very good personal narrative writing in this respect, Greep blurs the lines between the role and the role player, almost as if he's a wrestler playing heel. Because I think a lot of the time throughout this record, Greep is using the music on it to live out wins and process losses, and maybe dealing with moments, too, where he personally feels small. Because a lot of the time on this record, he's just creating these mad displays in order to build up the power or infamy of a protagonist.

Like in the second half of "Holy Holy", where he needs a partner to basically play into all of these complete shows of dramatic emotion, just ridiculous interactions where she's slapping and kissing him after he says her pussy is holy, or calling him a great dancer and making him feel or seem taller.

I could methodically go over every salacious and insecure line on this record. Every mention of cumming, rejection, money for sex, or itchy loins. Maybe even unpack all of the cuck and sugar daddy stuff on the track "As If Waltz". And I could further theorize as to what's real on this album, what's not. But honestly, I don't think we're supposed to know. Greep does make it pretty clear, though, that he is very much blurring the lines between fantasy and reality on this record.

There are bars upon bars upon bars of meta-commentary on that exact topic throughout the track, "The Magician". I think the fact that this is by far the longest track on the album and comes right toward the very end of it says a lot. It's like a massive twelve-minute asterisk placed at the end of a screed penned in blood.

I think the actual closer of the record just adds more questions than answers to this whole thing. It's actually a Frank Sinatra cover that is a perfect narrative fit for an album such as this, as it only solidifies the protagonist's inability to deal with reality, a reality where the love that he's been on about for the duration of the album is over now and done for good. He would rather live in a dream where it's still ongoing.

As far as the musical influences on this album go, and we definitely have to go over those, it's pretty clear Greep is pulling from just about every major jazz rock guitarist and band of the '60s and '70s. Of course, you're getting more whips of Canterbury scene prog in the UK. But his influences on that front were made already pretty clear by just about every black midi album thus far. Add in some of the Japanese jazz and jazz fusion bands that have caught on in recent years on the internet and gotten some really strong cult followings in the West. Then on top of all of that, bring in tons and tons and tons of Brazilian tropicalia, which is really one of the most predominant influences on the entire record.

Given that, I'm not really surprised to hear some of the sessions on this record were done in São Paulo. I'm also not surprised to hear Black Midi member Morgan Simpson also took part in the percussive end on some of the tracks of this record. I mean, some of the material on this record has been played live before in the context of Black Midi shows. However, hearing The New Sound here and its many tracks in their full context, I have to say I'm not all that surprised that Greep broke off from the band to make this record because I don't think this album could have existed in the context of a Black Midi discography, because the entire record is too wrapped up in a single character portrait of sorts. Really one man's crisis of powerlessness and irrelevancy.

Yeah, it's just too deep in that hole for it to feel like it's the result of multiple members of a band all contributing to it. This is not a slight against the album by any means. I think it's just a fact of its creative reality.

With all that being said, I do think there are a few downsides in tracklist, namely the song "Bongo Season", which vocally and musically I found to be a little grating, even in the midst of an album as wild as this. Then there's also "Motorbike", which I do think narratively plays into the album's greater themes around power trips, that thing. But the vocals brought to the table on this track by Seth Evans of HMLTD fame, as great as they are, I feel like bringing a different vocal into the mix throws off the immersion of the album. Because to me, Greep's vocals are essential in selling a lot of the fantasies this record has to offer. Technically, I would call his singing on this record impressive, dramatic, even whimsical at points, but his vocal inflections and overall delivery are still quite cartoony.

I mean, there's just something about his singing style that sounds very toady and naturally as if he's putting on an act of some sort. The act that Greep is putting on is an incredible one, lyrically, musically. There are some points where the record here diverges from the character portrait a bit too much, in my opinion.

But still, as is, The New Sound is a very special album. A relentless, kaleidoscopic, vibrant fever dream of sorts that I see myself returning to over and over with the same passion and hunger that I do any past Black Midi album, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong nine on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Black Midi. Greep. Forever.