Slum Sociable returns to our eardrums after 2 years of what we can only assume was solid studio time. This album hits some tender chords, it’s quite dark and brooding, fills you with emotion and yet still somehow lends itself to tapping your feet along with it. This body of work is very experimental in a sense and also incredibly innovative. It utilises a very diverse range of sounds and instruments to texture the songs and create the desired mood, leaving the listener feeling exactly how the song intends you to feel. All 12 tracks come together very nicely and take you on a journey of highs and lows that no doubt the artists themselves have been on.
The album kicks off with ‘Moby Bryant’, a very gentle number to ease you into everything. Soft keys, layered synths, a melodic drum beat and drawn out vocals all create a warm and ambient aura with the song. When the bridge comes in it really just picks up on some straight euphoria, closing out the track with a heavy dose of chorus. ’14 Days’ follows straight off, which is a much more high energy song, featuring a whole load of synth and kick heavy drums. It’s an interesting position for it as it leads into ‘Castle’, one of the lead singles from the album, which is much darker and covers a more sombre tone about relationships and the walls we all put up around ourselves to avoid them. The chords featured are all much deeper and drawn out, less of that happy pop sound, yet in itself is an amazing track. The video clip for this track (see below) is amazingly thought out and compliments the music perfectly. It’s minimalistic and dark and allows the viewer an insight into the concept behind the music.
Bringing us deeper into the creative minds they then lay into us with ‘Rusty’, a short, but sweet song. ‘Treated Like The Weather’ comes in as the in between song, fitting somewhere between the moody and the upbeat, setting us up for all the highs to follow. It features the similar drawn out chords of ‘Castle’, yet is also layered with some much more fun and vibrant beats to compliment the context of the song. Flowing nicely into ‘Name Call’, the second most popular song off the album, which has received spins on radio stations world wide already, is slow and moody, but oh so groovy. The whistle throughout just makes you feel like you’re deep inside a Quentin Tarantino movie.
The album continues to move in a direction of warmth and joy, with tracks such as ‘A Hearing’ which can really just make you want to stop what you’re doing and dance. The keys on this is simply superb. ‘Hand It Over’ really shows the versatility of the vocals of singer Miller Upchurch. They then slug us with a real jazzy number called ‘Keep Up With It’, which is a really intricate song. So many layers to it and so much soul poured in, it’s a really cool piece. Wrapping it up they give us ‘Don’t
‘Don’t Come Back Another 100 Times’ is according to Spotify the most popular song. It’s slow and a bit depressive, representative of what the band went through themselves when making the work.
It’s an amazing body of work and really shows how forward thinking these guys are as artists, I predict a very bright future for this Melbourne duo and sincerely hope that they’re able to conquer their demons.
Rating: ★★★★
Get it now via Liberation Music.
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author: Elliott Armour