serpentwithfeet returns with sophomore album ‘DEACON’
The experimental gospel and R&B singer returns with an airy and light suite of queer love songs which explore intimacy, friendship, and lust
★★★★☆
Photo: Braylen Dion
The most striking element of serpentwithfeet’s new LP is its sustained focus on the support and friendship that lies at the centre of the best romantic relationships. Over eleven songs, spanning only 29 minutes, Josiah Wise sings the praise of his male muses, down to the smallest of details. The record features an entire song about Derrick’s Beard (“Come over here, missing your beard”), and an endearing track called Same Size Shoe where Wise celebrates the fact his “boo has the same size shoe,” celebrating the equality in their relationship with “It ain’t no date if he walk behind me.”
Compared to his debut LP soil and the EP blisters that put him on the map, DEACON is a lighter and brighter album, consisting of (mostly) smooth R&B vocals over sparse instrumentation and a sea of reverb.
At first listen, it seems devoid of the manic and occult experimental energy of previous tracks like cherubim, and cuts like Amir would probably not raise any eyebrows on BBC Radio 1. Where soil sounded like it took its production cues from albums like Björk’s Vespertine, DEACON sounds more similar to Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Frank Ocean’s Blond and Moses Sumney’s græ. Although, due to its short length, it lacks some of the scopes of the best of its peers. The mix of gospel with pagan and secular themes is still present, however, albeit in a more accessible pop format.
The influence of Wise’s Gospel upbringing is most clear on Malik, with reverberant claps and quasi-religious refrains about his lover’s dad-bod: “Peace to the cookie that made you so thick… Blessed is the man who wears socks with his sandals.”
The mid-album interlude Dawn also sounds like a lost hymn, a gorgeous and layered acapella call to the dawn that feels like it should perhaps have been developed into a full-length track. The influence of his church choir roots lies across the whole record in the ever-present cathedral-like reverb, and the album’s title points to his continued rooting in his religious background.
The album opener, and perhaps the best track on the record, Hyacinth, sounds simultaneously like it is being chanted from the other side of a vast church and whispered into your ear in a field of wildflowers. The track seems to detail the story of a man growing a lover from the flowers in his garden, beginning over 70’s style clean guitar – “I think my green thumb has led me to a real one” – and climaxing to a uniquely serpentwithfeet chant about his “man who was once a Hyacinth.”
Other highlights on Josiah’s second album include the Latin-pop inspired Sailor’s Superstition, luscious Heart Storm, raunchy Wood Boy, and the rose-tinted uplift of Fellowship.
Sailor’s Superstition is the only track that expresses relationship anxiety, with Wise calling on superstition to make the love last, while constantly reminding himself that “most couples stop smiling after the first year.”
On Heart Storm, Wise recruits NAO to duet a spacious love ballad, reminiscent of Quiet Storm radio. Here the sound design reaches a grand new height. While the entire record is filled with an ecology of delightful micro-sounds, on this song subterranean bass and humungous synth pad washes create the illusion of a vast electrical storm under which Wise’s vocals praise the “Downpour, downpour, downpour.” NAO comes in halfway into the track with juxtaposing bright vocal lines, cutting across the maelstrom of the track below, almost as if she is floating in the sunlight above the clouds.
Wood Boy sounds most like serpentwithfeet’s older work, with Björk-esque electronic beats, over which Wise lustfully calls to his “wood boy”, unapologetically explicit in his desires – “Damn, he’s feeling up my body / Damn, I like him inside me” – culminating in a second verse where the instrumentation strips away, along with his mind:
“Turn me out / Think I’m gonna need a map after this / ‘Cause I don’t know where anything is / Where’s the grocery store? What’s my address? / What’s my name again?”
Fellowship is a fitting and uplifting closer to the record, wrapping up the themes of friendship in love. Wise sounds comfortable and fulfilled, duetting with Sampha: “I’m thankful for the love I share with my friends.” It is unclear whether the verses are about a lover or about a best friend, which is exactly the point. The track, and the album as a whole, is an affirmation of the deep friendship a man can have with his lover and the unashamed love he can have for his friends, and Wise manages never to sound cheesy along the way.
