... “Have you seen a woman give birth to a goat? That’s what courage looks like,” he snarls on ‘Through A War’, as the song’s narrator’s stream-of-consciousness frontline dispatch gets madder and madder, whilst the song ‘Bongo Season’ is ushered in with the irreverent  opening line: “two mice commit harakiri in the corner of my room”.

wildly accomplished and utterly absurd
There’s no surprise that the debut solo album by former Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep teems with madcap energy and originality. While some people doubted if he could do it alone without his old band, and the wry humour of the lead single ‘Holy, Holy’ dumbfounded listeners, this unrestrained intrepidity has always been his game and a line he has expertly toed. On The New Sound, the Londoner pushes on unrestrained into his future, and it’s almost without fault.

dazzling musicality swamped by a flood of ideas
There is tension throughout between the quality of the playing, which is executed at dazzling speed without sacrificing anything in the way of feel, and the disconnect and disorientation created by the many layers of meaning, counter-meaning and ironic distance that define Greep’s approach to lyrical concepts and character work. This wasn’t really an issue with Black Midi, a band whose appeal was partly founded upon overwhelming the listener, whether with volume, breakneck tempo switches, or blizzards of notes.

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?