Secret Meeting score: 80
by Joseph Purcell
After the success of 2014’s Mercury Prize winning debut, Dead, and a show stealing collaboration with the Leith Congressional Choir, on the T2 soundtrack, Edinburgh three-piece, Young Fathers, have created a genre defying, eclectic melting pot.
With their most accessible record to date, Cocoa Sugar, exemplifies perfectly a collective of musicians, acutely in sync with one another. Primary producer and musical innovator, Gavin G Hastings, revels in the responsibility of forging together a unique experience – and on Cocoa Sugar he is in masterful form, fusing gospel, choir and razor-sharp guitars on the incredible centrepiece, Lord. Hastings, perfectly in sync with fellow band members, Alloysious Ally Massaqoui and Kayus Bankole, lays the foundations within which all three members orchestrate their own unique vocal talents on this masterpiece. It is a track that perfectly presents the absolute necessity and genius of Young Fathers, and it sounds like nothing else. It is fresh, daring, thrill inducing, gorgeous and incredibly vital as it slides from being part hymn into a raucous, primal chant.
Lead single, In My View, grooves, jerks and bounds along a catchy beat, to create a perfect three minutes of R&B laden pop music. Whereas second single, Toy, is a frenetically quick affair, rumbling along over brilliant electro fuzz beats, with a snappy spite fuelled vocal – ‘There’s no respect, you’re just a broken little toy, silly little boy’. A track that casts memories to the magnificent TV On The Radio, yet firmly stamped with the Young Fathers sound, its choral chants surges the track through to a furious crescendo.
The varying influences across Cocoa Sugar have allowed Young Fathers to once more create an album that stands out above their peers, oozing with ideas. It is another clear step forward for the Edinburgh triumvirate, as they continue to deliver uniquely innovative material that many wish they had the talent for.
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