Mcy, Soul Mates – Liberation
As Curtis Mayfield Long before them, Barney Lister and Kojo Degraft-Johnson first made their arms with other artists. The first, DJ and multi-instrumentalist by training, collaborated with Celeste and Olivia Dean, while the second, singer whose power and intense voice exerted in the Gospel choirs in the south of London, we noticed alongside Little SimzCleo Sol or Liam Gallagher. But where many first young people at the head of such a CV would become unbearable skulls, the British duo never need to display its know-how to move: with a big display, they oppose a fascinating melodic flexibility.
On the same song, they can pass with finesse from an Afrobeat groove to more pop intentions (Flicker), From a jazz rhythm to orchestrations drawn from the most beautiful treasures in the soul (Fear), From a shattered verse to a loose chorus (Wandering Attention), while maintaining a sound consistency. A feat when we know that the association of Barney Lister and Kojo Degraft-Johnson is recent, dating only from 2020. The two accomplices took advantage of the confinement and the existential questions which he charged to sort through their ideas and keep it only the most immediately attractive. The most optimistic, too. With, in the background, the desire for a flirtatious soul, with graceful melodies with a song that constantly keeps its head high. They had already demonstrated it last year with the irresistible Flowers in Mourning, Extract from their first album. Here, they demonstrate it again with Man, undeniable climax of this second more playful, less academic album, and promised to the most beautiful praise. Volume 2 is typically what fans of Michael Kiwanuka Listen by imagining what a disc of their favorite artist could give if he was recorded alongside Jungle and Obongjayar.
Forgotten album of a magnificent loser of the American soul from the 1970s whose optimism comes down into a song, in the title: I’m so happy now.
Listening to the second album of the Londonian, published in 2024, is to find a faithful friend, capable of comforting or softening the spleen. All this in fourteen balanced titles.
Published in 2021 on Secretly Canadian, this album is that of an artist ready to magnify melancholy, romanticism and all these suspended moments that his melodies suggest.
