Label: Foxfive Records
Released: 17th March 2023
Few bands know more about creating worlds than Black Honey.
Since the beginning, their eye for grabbing at the spotlight and twisting it into their own glorious creation has made them more than just another very exciting band. It’s why after storming the Official Albums Chart with ‘Written & Directed’ and taking on some of the biggest stages of their career, ‘A Fistful Of Peaches’ feels like the grandstand moment. Turning those widescreen ambitions inwards, it’s Black Honey’s greatest statement to date: an album that roars with ambition and defiance.
‘A Fistful Of Peaches’ perfectly balances the personal and the punchy. The stomping hooks of ‘Charlie Bronson’, ‘Tombstone’ and ‘I’m A Man’ are wrapped in a furious intensity, yet still pack that emotional kick you see soaring off the likes of ‘Heavy’, ‘Out Of My Mind’ and ‘Up Against It’. It’s in that refreshing honesty where Black Honey capture something immediate. Delightfully pop and rolling in the sort of harmonies that get stuck firmly on repeat from the very first listen (the swinging ‘Cut The Chord’ but one shining example), Izzy Bee Phillips is unflinching in putting to paper life’s highs and lows – and ‘A Fistful Of Peaches’ shines because of it, not just lyrically but sonically too. Rock, glam, early-00s indie and more collide to soundtrack a band throwing away any fears or preconceptions of what they should be. The heavy, dense and chilling ‘Nobody Knows’ is something you’d never see coming, yet it is all the more powerful because of it.
Raw. Swaggering. Natural. ‘A Fistful Of Peaches’ is Black Honey at their sharpest, creating their greatest world to date from the joys and pains of the one they’ve lived through. An album of moreish brilliance, now that’s a statement.
