Album Review :: Gengahr - Where Wildness Grows

Album

Gengahr

Where Wildness Grows

March 9 2018 (Transgressive Records)

7.5/10

Words: Alison Mack

The second album from Gengahr after 2015's 'A Dream Outside', is a 12 track, 48-minute work produced by Neil Comber (Glass Animals, M.I.A, Songhoy Blues) and which sees the North Londoners move onwards and upwards from their inaugural outing.

For their second round, Gengahr introduce a bigger, bolder sound, working shimmering synths in with intricate guitars, and Felix Bushe’s melodic falsetto vocal. Sprightly opener ‘Before Sunrise’ zips along with uplifting twinkling percussion, leading on to ‘Mallory’s effectively winding, jangly guitar tones that are punctuated by abundant synths. It is here where we see depth emerging, yet still retaining the infectious rhythms. Yet when hearing the more psychedelically tinged 'Is This How You Love’, where Bushe's falsetto reaches its powered heights over trademark melodies, and the more choppy, swaggering 'I’ll Be Waiting', that Gengahr start to really kick in; a catchy, swaying vibe carrying it along  on a buoyant wave.

Trademark distortion comes in again on ‘Carrion’, rolling from a quasi-experimental start, upping the ante in an unrestrained four and a half minute rush in its midway position. The album title track employs delicately constructed guitars in a more low-key song to those that have preceded it, although it does break away at one point into rampant moment of forceful distortion. But both this, 'Blind Truth', and the fuzzy ‘Burning Air’ rather pale against the rest of the album.

The big finale comes in the shape of the rather majestic ‘Whole Again’. A swooning roll of layered vocals and indelible lyrics (“A lost cause, but I’ll do better I’m sure / And we could be whole again"), the guitars in its last half especially are really quite delicious.

‘Where Wildness Grows’ grew out of the two years spent writing and recording 'A Dream Outside', a process which saw them reject multiple recordings and eventually return to the drawing board, re-group and head back to the studio with a renewed clarity and artistic determination. From little seeds, big albums grow.