![]() ![]() I like to try different things, and I got to be a character a little bit inside the song. ![]() There are echoes of each of them in there. On that song, I remember when I started singing it, I was imagining Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Eric Carmen-those were the three lines that popped into my head. I’ve also been singing for a long time now, and I’ve learned some tricks along the way. “I stopped smoking five years ago,” he explained in an Entertainment Weekly interview, “and my voice is able to do things it wasn’t able to do when I was a smoker. Beginning with a familiar “Be My Baby” beat, “Algiers” segues right into a heart-sinking ballad, complete with a gentle guitar strum, a steady-handed rhythm section and Dulli’s subtle vocal shifts. This balance means the band’s lyrical message are delivered with more clarity.The band continue to be radical, but rather than being reactionary, ‘There is No Year’ is precise, thoughtful and powerful.The day all you Gen X’ers have been waiting for is finally here-the day Greg Dulli leads his old band The Afghan Whigs in their first proper single since the Clinton years. ‘Chaka’ belongs in the ‘70s, with its disco-influenced synths, guitars and simple drum beats. Discordant guitars and rapid-fire beats comprise most of the album, but lithe piano and pared-back instrumentation weave its way in, ensuring the record’s tone is evened out. It helps that the band are influenced by so many different genres that they can easily float between them without changing their sound. There are so many diverse sounds on ‘There is No Year’. His voice caressed by a piano, the bridge Fisher gently and hopefully sing: “Seen the kings and the soldiers / Overthrown and consumed / Run and tell it to everybody underground / Freedom is coming soon”. This may read as a holier-than-thou attitude – an allegation you could reasonably level at their last project – but Algiers regularly pull back. “Run around / Run away from your America / While it burns in the streets / I been here standing on top of the mountain / Shouting down what I see”, sings lead vocalist Franklin James Fisher. Take ‘Dispossession’, the second track on the album. It’s a tough balancing act to pull off act, but makes for a much more digestible album. Algiers was embroiled in controversy when the Acting Consul of the French Consulate. Rather than admonishing and preaching, Algiers offer a searing critique and a hopeful call to arms. and signed her to write song lyrics for the new film called Algiers. The lyrics here are urgent and much more precise than those of the album’s predecessor. Where their last project, ‘The Underside of Power’, came on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brexit and the results of the 2016 American presidential election, ‘There Is No Year’ sounds like a considered rumination on political turmoil. It is a considered project that showcases their growth as a four-piece (former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong became an official member in 2017). ‘There Is No Year’, the third album from Atlanta-formed Algiers, is a further exploration of the sound they’ve become renowned for: a heady concoction of post-punk, ’60s soul, gospel and noise, all underpinned by highly politicised lyrics. ![]()
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