Black Honey - Soak

Black Honey’s fourth album, ‘Soak’, is vocalist Izzy Phillips trying to wrap her head around the ever-decaying modern world, taking her cues from the master of dystopia Stanley Kubrick to unravel all the trauma and torment that has haunted her throughout her life thus far.

From the moment the thick guitar kicks in on opening track ‘Insulin’, it’s clear that you’re in for a slightly wonky, off-kilter journey, swirling through a blues-rock adjacent walk down ‘Carroll Avenue’, an almost metalcore breakdown in ‘Vampire in the Kitchen’, and ending in a bravely pared-back confession in ‘Medication’ that, sometimes, it’s easier to get by when the everything feels a little less visceral.

As much as it’s an album predominantly forged from serious topics, there’s plenty of fun to be found. ‘Dead’ takes great pleasure in a playful, tongue-in-cheek chorus, while lead single ‘Psycho’ syncopates and swells around Izzy’s defiantly unique vocal. It’s not always easy to blend together modern production and 21st Century topics with a sonic palette that maybe feels more at home in the late-60s and early-70s pop style, but on this album, Black Honey are able to create a feeling that is dystopian but not totally hopeless, something that’s even harder to achieve given gestures wildly all this.

This is album four, and there’s no sign of the band slowing down. Fuzzy, faded, but still with enough funk and fun to keep spirits up.