2 x Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Step right up, it’s the Geordie Greep Show! Spills, thrills, an indomitably strange and charming redhead, we’ve got it all! And here comes our host, in his silky best, a modern lothario of taste and sophistication, with the crowd at his fingertips. But that’s not all; backed by a freewheeling in-house band, he’ll play you the salsa, the mambo, the tango and Scott Walker—sometimes all at once. Who said talk shows were dead?
For those who mourned black midi’s breakup, fret not. Geordie Greep’s solo debut restores the feeling of controlled chaos brought by the Londoners, only this time far more indebted to music played at the Copacabana. In true Greep fashion, session musicians in Brazil were cobbled together at the last minute, with them unaware of his music. It’s impossible to tell, as songs like “The New Sound” and “Through A War” swing with a sensuous lilt, with Greep presiding over as lord and master, his delightfully sleazy voice gracing the bossa on-hand with sordid tales of debauchery.
The New Sound is a star turn for Greep, in an era where real rock stars are rare and male rock stars are even rarer. He is a dexterous vocalist whose lyrics are simultaneously boisterous, self-effacing, confounding, and hilarious. Consider the opener “Blues”: “And you havе a bigger dick than any man who’s ever lived/ And you can cum more than a hundred stallions” is the work of a man who both takes himself seriously and not at all in one fell swoop. Geordie Greep is a court jester who’s always in on the joke.
The penultimate track, “The Magician,” is a CliffsNotes version of The New Sound. A bombastic, 12-minute catharsis session originally performed by black midi, it’s fitting that Greep repurposed it for his album. Cramming every possible emotion that entails a breakdown of a relationship, it’s a paean to his tenuous commitment to conflating reality and fiction. Can we ever truly know Geordie Greep? That might kill the magic.
