The default setting for Brighton indie quartet Black Honey is pop-grunge. There are plenty of moments during their fourth album when Nineties femme-rockers L7 spring to mind. But Black Honey also spread their wings and fly in other directions. The latter songs tend to be Soak’s most noticeable, although whatever style the band chose, they know enough about hooks to keep listeners onside.
Singer Izzy B Phillips, newly sober and with a recent autism diagnosis, veers lyrically between cinematic impressionism and a more specific observational approach. The album’s closing song, “Medication”, showcases the band at their best. It’s a strummed, honest rumination around Phillips’ experiences (“It’s an A-star level skill being this fun and mentally ill/Not sure what they mean, not acting your age”), which explodes into something widescreen at the chorus, akin to the ethereal secular gospel of Spiritualized.
While numbers such as “Dead” and “Slow Dance” are undeniably contagious, they are very much more-of-the-same from a band ten years into their career. So it’s the atypical songs that excite: the clappy groove of “To the Grave”, the Pixies-go-goth lust song “Vampire in the Kitchen”, the huge, Garbage-esque “Shallow”, and, especially, the slow-rollin’ indie-funk of “Psycho”.
Black Honey aren’t as musically adventurous as their peers Wolf Alice (or quite as successful, though their last two albums made the UK Top 10, which isn’t to be sniffed at). But they do what they do well. They’re a damn sight more musically entertaining than the current wave of landfill-indie-reborn acts, such as The Ks, The Lathums, and The Reytons. Crucially, they have the songs. If Black Honey had a breakout tune go viral, they’d be right up there on festival line-ups. Such a song could easily be on Soak.
Below: watch the video for "Shallow" by Black Honey
