I want your shield
I want your weapon
Gimme that bulletproof vest
And don’t forget I’m not susceptible to your nonsense
I’m a winner

No falling for your charms
No crash into your arms
Handful of coins
And a balled-up fist
Picking rubbish
Cleaning rubbish

I Saw

Aw, man, Young fucking Fathers, dudes??

They’re up there with Janelle Monae as Necessary Evil legends – and given the cultural importance of this blog that essentially makes them musical legends of the past fifteen years – with a simply inscrutable back catalogue that now demands they’re expected to meet higher standards than their peers. Like, I really loved the RobinPlaysChords album, but am I unconsciously and immediately setting it against some of the greatest music of the century? This means artists like Young Fathers, Let’s Eat Grandma, and Janelle – the most golden of Gold Star Artists – are, unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, held to a higher standards than mere mortals like Lauren Auder.

This can mean that artists like Janelle can get a bit of a kicking on these pages when they take their foot off the gas slightly. In Janelle’s case, when they just can’t be arsed with any more wider social meanings and just piss about with some lazy, liberal ‘sex positive’ nonsense. See?? I’m still giving them a fucking kicking right now!! It’s not easy to operate on such heightened levels of expectation, and the fact that I can only really name three artists that have reached that Most Golden status is because it’s near impossible to maintain the quality needed for me to feel entitled that brilliance release after release. It’s extra hard if all of your work needs to have been released no earlier than 2007 (and ideally not in 2011 and 2012 when I didn’t bother making a list). Not many are strong enough to both handle this expectation and then continue to carry it.

It also has an opposite effect though: if you’re always just fucking amazing, and then release more fucking amazing stuff, people* might just respond with “Yeah. Of course it’s fucking amazing. Well done. You’ve done your duty. Next album please?”.

(*’people’ as in ‘me’)

Coming five years after their third, Young Fathers’ fourth album is their most affirmative record yet, an infectious embrace of the overwhelming power of community and shared voices. It’s astonishing how instantaneous the record sounds: these songs don’t sound like they were slowly and artfully crafted over a period of multiple years, they sound like a spontaneous and adlibbed group chant just exploded into life. This record didn’t take five years to make?! They just happened to capture an organic half hour flashmob of musical improvisation, along with chants and choirs. And it sounds amazing.

The band’s ethnic eclecticism (Liberia, Nigeria, fucking Scotland…) has always been a notable part of their identity, and has always acted as an easy explainer of the reasons behind their diverse and ultra encompassing music, but it has never really been part of their sound. Informed by the intermutual capacity of musical traditions of music that member Kayus Bankole witnessed on holidays he took to Ghana and Ethiopia (five years between albums?? Yeah, you’ve got time for flipping holidays, mate. Lazy bastards). So previous laments about the pathetic mess that the UK has descended into have been turned into almost joyous, quasi gospel celebrations of the type of magic that can come from shared experiences, from people all being on the same page. The inspiration came from Africa, but it applies wherever people exist.

So maybe this should be higher? Maybe this is, actually, one of the best albums of the year? Maybe the best? Perhaps I’m wary of the top of this list being a parade of the same artists and I’m keen to give other people a go? Perhaps. But, then again, Young Fathers have never actually finished top, and I would love that. I said last year, when I named Geronimo the 42nd best song of 2023, that “I would love the narrative if they won the whole thing next year”. And in my post on their last album all those years ago I stated that “I have no doubt that they’ll win this most cherished of prizes at some point in the future”. No, I’ve second guessed and evaluated my opinion enough: I would actually prefer ‘Heavy Heavy’ to be higher, so the fact it’s here proves to me that it is actually the 16th best album of the year. And considering how amazing it is, this list about to get special.

And before I go, a reminder that Young Fathers were once pulled from a German festival because of their support for the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement all the way back in 2018. “As a German, it is of course difficult for me to be linked to a movement that boycotts Israel”, said the festival’s artistic director Stephanie Carp. I mean, what the actual fuck? They were later reinvited, obviously because of the bad publicity, which of course Young Father’s politely declined, because they have some fucking integrity. Just in case you thought that supporting Palestine and objecting to Israel’s apartheid state was some new TikTok trend. Or that support for Palestine being silenced hasn’t been happening for years. Decades.

Hey, Israeli government? Here’s what I think:

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Run away

I Saw

2018 (No.17), 2015 (No.12), 2014 (No.2)

Metacritic: 86

Legit Bosses: 3