Algiers - The Underside of Power

I've lost the times I've been bought and sold.

Album: The Underside of Power [2nd album]
Genre: Post-Industrial, Post Punk
Album Release: June 23rd 2017
Length: 4:12
Producer: Adrian Utley & Ali Chant
Vocalist: Franklin James Fisher
Label: Matador Records

Music Video


Live on KEXP in 2017


Live on A38 Rocks in 2018

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: 2,800,000 +
YouTube Music: 840,000 +
American Songwriters Best Albums 2017: #15
The Quietus Best Albums 2017: #24

Credits

Bass, drums, drum machine, guitar [x5], harmonium, piano [x2], synthesizer [x2], tambourine

Details

• The album was produced by Adrian Utley from Portishead and utilises that bands eclectic, genre-bending style to good effect.
  
  
• 'The Underside of Power', the song, not the album, is perhaps Algiers best produced work featuring at least 14 instruments playing a cacophonous barrage of sound that laments the struggles of black people in slavery. The singer channels the pains of people in the past singing about "having been bought and sold" and quoting Sam Cooke "one day a change is gonna come".
  
  The prominent use of gospel elements roots the music firmly in history and the vocalist changes his delivery in order to fit the theme of the song. Here, the chameleon-like Franklin James Fisher sounds as if he's from the first half of the 20th century, whereas on the the albums next song 'Death March' he sound like he's from 1980's London.
  
  It's credit to the band that despite such broad influences each song is distinctively their own and the album is coherent. It helped that the entire thing made by the same production team .
  
  
• Algiers make intense, atmospheric music drenched in noise that attempts to dig beneath the skin and burrow all the way to the soul. It's gothic music with gospel elements. The holy and the profane. A post-punk and industrial hybrid updated for a 21st century where machinery reigns supreme, and with an outstretched arm, the band reach to the past in attempt to touch God.
  
  It's ambitious to say the least, doesn't always come off, but when it does everything clicks. 'The Underside of Power', the album, can at times be a difficult listen, featuring long sections of dissonance and atonal swells, but for fans of noise, or those searching for something different, making the effort is worthwhile.
  
  
• Algiers take their name from the film 'Battle for Algiers' (1966), which is about Algeria's struggle to break free from French colonial rule. The songs have lyrics with a strong left-wing, political perspective. In an interview with Brightons Finest they refer to Trump supporters as "redhats", comparing them to Mussolini's blackshirts, which reminded me of a quote from Sinclair Lewis "when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." The comedian Goerge Carlin paraphrased "It will not be in blackshirts. It will be in Nike sneakers waving a flag with a trademark in the corner."
  
  I find the lyrics lack nuance while the music has it in spades. This combination of definitive lyrics and nebulous sound add to the dissonance of the music creating a feeling of confusion, and even annoyance in what is a deliberately confrontational attempt to communicate how it feels to be oppressed.
  
  "We're talking about people and groups who have been disenfranchised and oppressed, and what it's like to identify with those people, whether it's empathetic or sympathetic, and it's really just about not having control over your own life, because you're under the thumb of somebody who wants to control you." [from an interview with Saved By Old Times]
  
  Without knowing the particulars of the bands lives it's difficult judge whether or not they are oppressed, although by naming themselves after the Battle of Algiers, they at least relate to people who are. It's typical of modern life that people who tour the world playing music see fit to compare themselves to people who suffered atrocities during war. It's estimated that 950,000 people died during the French-Algerian War while the Human Development Index lists America as the 20th best place to live in the world.
  
  What's important to the music, however, is that the band feel oppressed to some degree. It's interesting that, out of all the things there are to express, they choose to express oppression. You could put it down to the hubris of youth or that to someone who hasn't known real suffering relatively minor inconveniences can feel profound. Maybe the band do indeed have a tragic backstory? But nevertheless, many musicians experience tragedy in their lives but make beautiful music. Algiers have made an artistic choice to focus on the disenfranchised and it sometimes comes off as schoolboys sulking because they've been told to tidy their rooms.
  
  People can have intense personal feelings and relate them through music but Algiers protest the systematic oppression experienced by whole groups. They identify with the Black Panthers, they have a song called 'Walk Like a Panther', as well as the Algerian revolutionaries. It's a social, instead of a personal thing. I could understand if it was personal but I don't get why people who are relatively well-off feel oppressed or identify with those who are. Hardship used to be something to overcome but today it seems like people want to wallow in it.
  
  

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