king krule? more like king of cool
by liam creaser
On Archy Marshall’s second record under the King Krule name, the British 23 year old crafts a dark and vivid atmosphere through soundscapes reminiscent of a bleak, rainy night. The OOZ is nineteen tracks and just over an hour of Marshall’s trademark deep accent and clean reverbed guitars, and incorporates soft, background saxophones and an array of mellow keyboards and samples.
Marshall could not have picked a better time to release this album. Since it came out on October 13th, The OOZ has been the soundtrack to the cold winds of a night in autumn. The album almost seems to follow some sort of narrative–it gives the image of Marshall drunkenly bouncing around a desolate cityscape in the cold, popping into jazz clubs and grimey alleyways only to find his way to the sidewalk beneath the moon again. Some tracks even offer spooky sounds, like “Vidual” which comes out of nowhere with a sinister groove and howl where you can almost picture skeletons and jack-o-lanterns dancing along. It’s a very October album, but the sound is guaranteed to resonate with anyone looking for introspection while roaming at night beneath the streetlights.
Any sucker for major-seven melancholia and wistfulness is sure to fall in love with tracks like “Logos” and “Cadet Limbo”, while fans of the more gritty, underbelly of London sound will feel at home with “Dum Surfer” and “Half Man Half Shark”. The theme of blue appears again on “Lonely Blue” (and the cover of the album). On many of the songs on his previous album, Marshall refers to the color as if it’s a person, perhaps even a lover. The two King Krule releases are very different in terms of atmosphere, arrangement, and execution, but it was interesting to see Marshall reprise a recurring theme throughout his work. The album’s variety of sounds is certainly the highlight, but his lyrics act as a hidden gem if one wanted to read even further inside Marshall’s head.
Like 6 Feet Beneath the Moon before it, The OOZ incorporates a variety of styles including punk, jazz, hip hop, and crooning ‘50s rock and roll. Marshall’s vocal style ranges from softly spoken to low crooning in an almost Elvis fashion to borderline rapping to screaming until his accent completely obscures his lyrics. It’s important to note his use of arrangement in the tracklist: while the constant jumping around from sounds (from loud to soft, from confrontational to reflective) may seem disorganized and muddled, it’s really what gives the album its strength. The songs may not flow or segue into each other like many albums with distinct atmospheres do, but King Krule was able to pull off that atmosphere by having an overarching feel to the album through a consistent use of instrumentation and melancholy themes rather than keeping the same sound from song to song.
This album is certainly one of my favorites from this year so far. Waiting four years for a proper King Krule release was certainly worth it, in fact this album stacks up just as well with some of the best comeback albums of this year, including LCD Soundsystem’s return. If, for whatever reason, King Krule wasn’t taken seriously as one of alternative music’s figureheads before, he is now, and he’s only 23.