White Bread Black Beer

About

Green Gartside, who is Scritti Politti, is a musical/personal enigma. Just as musicians emphasize that it’s the notes you don’t play that matter as much as the ones you do, for Gartside much of his mystique is built on the years he doesn’t make music as the ones when he does. He has been appearing and disappearing from public eye for nearly four decades and <i>White Bread Black Beer</i> is his first album in seven years. It was recorded at home by his lonesome, yet while it has elements of quiet desperation with softly murmured minimalist tunes that sound complete in their skeletal arrangements, it isn’t your standard collection of songs from a room. Much of the album rests on Gartside’s healthy relationship with electronics – though he’s abandoned the hip-hop influences of previous exercises. He harmonizes with himself, then sets it up against a futurist synthetic blend of ethereal pulses and accents. At 50, his voice is still pure and childlike, suggesting an adolescent Simon and Garfunkel funneled through Prefab Sprout chasing their earnest dreams through a modernist landscape. Tunes such as “Throw,” “E Eleventh Nuts” and “Window Wide Open” offer delicate romance best heard in twilight.

via Apple Music