Perseverance pays off for Gengahr.
For musicians the experience of that last few years has been anything but definitive.
Could they tour? Was there still an audience out there who wanted to listen? How does this brave, almost income free new world expect so many people to stick around?
Gengahr vocalist Felix Bushe found himself asking these questions and many more during the various momentum sapping downtimes the band experienced.
After the release of their third album Sanctuary at the beginning of 2020, the curtain temporarily came down for everyone and whilst he’d drawn on personal issues as a source for that and previous records, the singer had admitted that the backdrop to Red Sun Titans‘ creation was far less empirical:
“I was at a crossroads where you had to really draw back and ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You had to find the purpose again and that really brought me back round to the beginning.”
As a consequence, the foursome – who met at school – are now energised by the idea of a fresh start 3-and-a-half years in the making.
Revitalised, the new sound – or, tongue in cheek, now labelled ‘Gengahr 2.0’ – dabbles mainly with 90’s indie rock and psychedelia, traditionally the home of outfits like Glass Animals or Django Django.
Not everything – or at least the aspects that in the past made Gengahr intriguing in a crowded field – has been lost: Bushe’s playful, multi-octave voice gives the songs a familiarly pied-piper quality; opener Alkali flirts, butterfly-like, between brains and brawn, the story a plotting of the fine line between insomnia and a desire to be in the moment.
Having been on the sidelines for so long, participation is also the subject matter of In The Moment, its stop-start buzz and delicate guitar lines soundtracking nocturnal dreams whilst the vibrant, loved-up afrobeat of A Ladder is a reminder that making pop doesn’t always have to mean compromise or disposability.
These explorations of the way in which our inner child still tries to surface despite the barriers of adult life are a conscious attempt to divide Red Sun Titans into equal parts, Bushe revealing: “The album sits at that crossroads where you can still see the past, but you’re trying your best to embrace the future.”
There’s also some real-world darkness: The title-track is an indirect response to a fan’s request to write about the impending climate catastrophe, deliberately though without addressing the nuts and bolts of the problem.
Call that invoking an artist’s prerogative, but other attempts are made to invoke disconnected feelings; In My Way is less sure of itself, noises pitch shifted and distorted, some atonal scuzz to reflect the narrowing of options.
That, along with other tracks that run the album in to its finale like The Interview and Collapse, are things seen closer from the edge; all of them roam whilst staying within a rough-set boundary, the latter an introverted, drowsy sounding conclusion that ruminates on handling loss and snap evaluations of worth.
As Felix Bushe knows, the last few years for most have seen an erosion in what you used to be able to count on as reality. During that time many of Gengahr’s contemporaries have called it a day, returning to whatever constitutes a normal life, but Red Sun Titans proves that he and his comrades are not quite ready for civilian life any time soon.
And in surrendering to chance, they’ve taken the bravest option they could.
