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Heavy Heavy Image
Metascore
86

Universal acclaim - based on 17 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
8.1

Universal acclaim- based on 29 Ratings

  • Summary: The fourth full-length release for Edinburgh-based trio Young Fathers was written and recorded over three years.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 17
  3. Negative: 0 out of 17
  1. 100
    ‘Heavy Heavy’ is a passionate, soulful and often mesmerising work that will stick around long past the first listen. Succinct and underpinned by a catchy melodic structure, it continues Young Fathers’ peerless run of singular albums and further cements them as one of the more unique acts to exist today.
  2. Jan 30, 2023
    100
    Heavy Heavy is rarely an easy listen, but it's never less than engrossing.
  3. Feb 7, 2023
    88
    Young Fathers don't owe us anything except themselves, which Heavy Heavy feels like a true and warmly sincere extension of, a hand extended from the light across the dark, if we're willing to let go and take it.
  4. Jan 31, 2023
    80
    Heavy Heavy may be a little too sweet for long-time listeners, but its massive choruses, strong hooks and ecstatic sound too timely and too powerful to deny.
  5. Feb 16, 2023
    80
    Heavy Heavy pulls in the listener with an empathetic lust for life that, whether brimming with optimism, steeling for a threat to survival, or reckoning with a perceived futility of existence, somehow never wavers.
  6. Feb 3, 2023
    80
    ‘Heavy Heavy’ sees them fully marry their two sides; is this a very fun album from a very serious band, or a very serious album from a very fun band? Why not both? Young Fathers can have it both ways.
  7. Feb 7, 2023
    75
    Heavy Heavy sweeps its listener along, churchlike, and conveys the feeling that resisting the urge will always feel worse than rising up and pushing the air from your lungs. And then, after a brief 10 tracks, it’s all over—as if the procession has marched on, out of earshot. But the invite is still there extended: It’s up to you whether to accept it or not.

See all 17 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Feb 3, 2023
    10
    Solid output from a solid band. Powerful, danceable and fun. Best of 2023, so far.
  2. Feb 6, 2023
    10
    Well worth the wait for album #4 which knocks it out of the proverbial park with a fresh, new, uplifting, toe tapping 32 minutes of musicalWell worth the wait for album #4 which knocks it out of the proverbial park with a fresh, new, uplifting, toe tapping 32 minutes of musical magic. Just what 2023 needed to celebrate. Imagine how this music will feel in a live concert. Every track is great. No lemons. Please tour in the westen US soon. Airplay on KZMU an absolute certainty. Proud to be from a country that delivers such great medicine... Expand
  3. Feb 10, 2023
    9
    Young Fathers' best? Actually, it's possible. I think the resistance towards this album among the group's audience is more of a momentaryYoung Fathers' best? Actually, it's possible. I think the resistance towards this album among the group's audience is more of a momentary sense of disorientation, because ultimately the experience of listening to Young Fathers' music is quite disorienting, dissociative; you don't know what to do with it or how to treat it, how to digest the effect this unorthodox mix of genres of theirs is supposed to have in you. Yet, repeated listens always do the work and you begin to notice the amount of effort that has been put onto this album, what seems at first a collection of more weird songs by the weird Scottish trio unveils itself as the powerful, confrontational and exhausting (and also very short) journey of a record called, quite fittingly, Heavy Heavy. It’s heavy not because of being related to music considered as heavy, but heavy because of how layered, exuberant -or protuberant- and spine-chilling it sounds from start to finish, the mere spiritual quality it has.

    Every song here is unpredictable and wild in their own terms, the initial three-track run consisting of Rice, I Saw (the pseudo-anguished banger that couldn’t miss) and Drum set the rules of the game: this album has an upbeat mood overall, generous percussion, and the intricate noisy ventures of previous studio material are still way present, if anything they feel more fully-fleshed and acute than ever. This first leg of Heavy Heavy display some truly elevated Young Fathers, as if they were holding on to the same light they found after achieving pulling together the jaw-dropping Only God Knows a few years back and are ragingly refusing to let it go.

    That leads into the ecstasy and praise-inciting call for solace that is Tell Somebody, subsequently to the redemption that breathes in like a lion and breathes out like a lamb within Geronimo, the album's lead single which didn't catch too many ears due possibly to its slow-burner nature. That being said, in the context of the whole album Geronimo gains a different level of resonance and turns out to be the perfect sister piece to Tell Somebody.

    Just like that, no second wasted, 16 minutes have gone by and we're already halfway there. The first section of Shoot Me Down, with that sampling architecture and progressive atmospheric padding is so fire that ever since the first time it's heard becomes easily one of the highlight moments of the record. Ululation is a free-spirited, evocative expression of the African fibers Young Fathers have always nurtured themselves from, managing to make it a home also for a shrilling synth line that reminds me a lot of the palette of sounds coming from the White Men Are Black Men Too era. The turn is now for Sink or Swim and Holy Moly, both bringing the swift rhythms and catchy hooks back, accompanied by a shared perspective of the usage of time and energy in our lives in their lyrics.

    Wrapping things up with Be Your Lady, the hardened yet-sensitive personalities of the trio claim they don't want to be a man for a woman, but a lady for them instead, as almost a gesture of surrender to give love and receive love more openly, amidst the inner turmoil that is facing, embracing and taming that beast man himself is, hence adding dimension to the ethos that lies behind the music of Young Fathers; like a super-tight hug with a piercing shout to the ear out of nowhere, while a gust of thick, warm air hits your face and fills your nostrils, but it's not dense enough to stop your eyes from watering or your heart from tweaking.

    To me, it's the evolution of Cocoa Sugar, therefore the ripest state of their creativity and skillfulness since they were paving their way in the lo-fi scene with those first unconventional but highly functional equations that resulted in Tape One and Tape Two. There could be no other point they needed to get but this, their most tribal-sounding, throbbing-sounding, celebratory-sounding, confident-sounding release so far -coming from a group that has, in fact, never lacked any balls-.
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  4. May 8, 2023
    9
    A good variety of sounds and tones, the album felt wild and unpredictable. The ambient mix parts of the album felt stale at points. Also likedA good variety of sounds and tones, the album felt wild and unpredictable. The ambient mix parts of the album felt stale at points. Also liked the first half a lot more than the second. Expand
  5. Feb 3, 2023
    8
    This is very much a Young Fathers record. It expands on their sound while maintaining the ability to be both unique and difficult to imitate.This is very much a Young Fathers record. It expands on their sound while maintaining the ability to be both unique and difficult to imitate. I would argue this is the most fun, or at least upbeat, sounding record in their discography. The lyrics are also as solid as anything they’ve release up to this point.
    Young Fathers have a way of writing life-affirming records. This album is no exception and a more than welcome addition to their already impressive output. Very happy to see them back.
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  6. Feb 3, 2023
    8
    Great instrumentation! Catchy songs. The lyrics could be more insightful, but overall very varied track list.
  7. Feb 3, 2023
    5
    Bland and overproduced compared to their older work with less interesting lyrics, very disappointing.

See all 8 User Reviews