T.here very few records this year can be healthier, more soppy or with no life assurance than Deacon, the second full-length tour from Serpentwithfeet, a multi-faceted tattoo featuring a large pentagram in a circle in front of it and the title of the new album in capital letters over the neck. Across 11 different routes, Deacon it is a sad celebration of love and friendship, a record captured in the sunshine and gratitude of California. The forbidden appearance of the maverick songwriter – a nose ring, hair in horntails like a horn – is not only strangely forbidden by the working group he did before.
Born in Baltimore, transferred to Brooklyn, but now happily captured in Los Angeles, 32-year-old Josiah Wise, a singer in church, has developed a knowledge that color bring his gospel on R&B. But he also trained in jazz and the classical tradition. This optional corpus of knowledge has captured a series of EPs and a previous album, 2018’s Soil, full of heavenly vocal acrobatics as well as arrhythmic, atheist pop-room inclusion. In 2017, he toured with the indie band Grizzly Bear and played with Björk, a fellow vocalist in voice streaming. Since then, Serpentwithfeet has added rapper Ty Dolla Sign, Ellie Goulding and music designer Virgil Abloh to the gamut of his collaborators.
While Wise ‘s previous work has not been forbidden, the left – wing grooves and multi – faceted calls tend to dwell on the high drama and agonies of love. No more. Deacon It’s a 180-degree pivot, a table so calm, poppy and so endearing that you can’t help but move along with it.
His lead single, Same Size Shoe, bends to a school garden chorus: “My shoe and I wear the same size shoe,” he crouches, so clearly overjoyed that he wants trumpets and then begin to disperse. “Bah bah bah dah!”
Old & Fine is looking forward to Serpentwithfeet and his “sweetie” putting the years together. “Love you as much as I like the chorus of the day, I’m ready for the road ahead,” he said. Nature – flowers, storms, mornings – has used the place of religious arcana as a resource for metaphor. He can’t believe he’s lucky. “Don’t tell me the universe isn’t listening,” mobile Serpentwithfeet sings on an opening track, Hyacinth.
Domestic bliss consoles take up a lot of this record’s runtime, with just a few volumes in which Serpentwithfeet remembers – or thinks – other men who have gone by. Monogamy gets star lips here, though Deacon also respecting another’s love. “Blessed is the man who wears socks with his sandals,” he jokes happily, about Malik from Atlanta, fingering his fingers all the time. Amir is “so kind and warm, damning, I could shed tears”. All we know about the bearded Derrick is that he needs to get up early, but Serpentwithfeet doesn’t want to let him go.
Deacon showcasing same-sex black love as healing and transgender, full of calm and humor, unified shoes and glasses of prosecco. Wood Wood is clearly the same thing, although this is not just awkward, but transformative, getting it completely “reorganized” by loving ecstasy. “Where’s the grocery store? / What is my address? / What is my name again? ”It hyperventilates. In interviews, Serpentwithfeet makes it clear that it intends to deliver specific information about sweeter relationships as universal people – because they are.
If some of this warmth is delivered as edgy, R&B mini – the Weeknd is not that far off – one interesting note of warning sounds, the middle of the record. The superstitions of the sailors worry that Serpentwithfeet and his love should be humble, lest they disturb the spirits of the air. “Don’t whistle on a boat,” said this very different chorus, “we don’t want to catch the wind.”
But it’s just a blip. Alliance, the closer album, concludes with a group singing in which Sampha and Lil Silva join Serpentwithfeet on the chorus. “My friends, my friends, I am thankful for the love I share with my friends,” they sing.
Previously, Serpentwithfeet’s words tended towards the rococo; air Deacon, he speaks directly. “Maybe it’s a blessing of my 30s / I spend less time worrying / And more time reciting love,” he shouts. An agenda here is huge, speaking to difficult times. “Deacon something I wanted to create in a tradition that I saw, ”he told the Defender recently, “black people are celebrating in any way. Black people are living their damn lives by no means. Because no one can take my peace or my happiness from me. ”