Album Review: Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar

The Mercury Prize-winning Scottish trio wrote and recorded Cocoa Sugar over the course of a year in the band's basement studio. It certainly has that subterranean, lo-fi sound they've tinkered with over the course of three albums, and a lot more besides.

In My View ought to be a sizeable radio hit, or at the very least appeal to the Methyl Ethyl crowd, with its disaffected pop sensibilities. Cocoa Sugar has hidden depths though, as successive listens peel back surprising new layers. The weird, undulating bass of Lord, surely one of 2018's most unconventional singles, is striking but the gospel-like harmonies that ring through transform it into something that's somehow desperate and uplifting at the same time. It's one of a handful of songs with a surprisingly personal tone; another fine example being Border Girl, which has a confession box feel with unified vocals that border on the transcendental.

Cocoa Sugar is a good example of what can organically flourish when the pressure's off. Journeying inward, Young Fathers have patiently developed a sound and songcraft that is entirely and unmistakably their own.