Research, analyse, and critcally discuss approaches to creativity in (the work of) Geordie Greep in The New Sound.
‘The New Sound’ is the 2024 debut album of former Black Midi frontman and guitarist Geordie Greep. Black Midi itself existed for seven years between 2017 when they formed, and 2024 when the band took an ‘indefinite hiatus’, essentially signalling the end of the band. Greep worked on the album while Black Midi still existed, and they performed early versions of what would later become ‘Walk Up’, when the song was still called ‘Lumps’ (Silverstein, 2026), as well as . The album is an ‘over-the-top’ hybrid of genres, including, “choppy salsa, mid-century showtunes, smooth jazz, Isley Brothers guitar disco, big-budget samba, and a dozen other styles” (Garner, 2024). As the album moves between songs that portray a mix of men full of self-loathing that express it through flagrant over-sexualisation and toxic masculinity, to such an extreme point that they are caricatures of themself. The album reflects this through the music, with the opening song ‘Blues’ containing “breakneck guitar riffs and fellow black midi member Morgan Simpson’s machine-gun-fire rhythm” (Silverstein, 2026), providing a link to his previous band, but as each song plays, additional styles and genres move the album into Geordie Greep’s own creation, with latin influenced tracks such as ‘Terra’ and ‘Bongo’ season, and the theatrical multi-genre songs like lead single ‘Holy, Holy’ and the climax of the album, ‘The Magician’. Through Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model, and analysis of the song ‘Holy, Holy’, I am going to discuss Geordie Greep’s approaches to creativity in ‘The New Sound’.
In promotional interviews for the album, Geordie Greep mentioned his session work with South American session musicians in Sao Paulo. This draws similarities to Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ although without the added political turmoil of apartheid, where the artist was inspired by the music of the culture, and decided to work with them in order to harness their sound. It is important to note that a reason for Greep’s vocal collaboration with the Brazilian musicians, other than he and Black Midi’s regular work with session players in earlier albums, was to avoid accusations of appropriation. However, in record shop interviews such as ‘What’s in my bag with Amoeba’, it is shown that he has an eclectic taste in music, supported by regular posts of classical or jazz pieces on his social media. In his interview with Devin Birse on Post Trash in 2024, Greep said “In Europe I’d love to go to, you know the far stretches of Eastern Europe and play with whoever over there. Parts of Africa, you never know like South Africa, Central. Puerto Rico, I’ve never been there, to play with these great musicians that started this whole tradition that became salsa music.”. The “30 session musicians employed across the length of this album” (Fantano, 2024), are an essential part of the album, providing a blend of textures throughout the record. As well as the notable latin influence, one of the main influences in the album and essentially Greep’s life is jazz, with the track, ‘Bongo Season’ providing a free-flowing jazz piece, that provides a break from the all-encompassing egos of his other songs characters.
However, because ‘The New Sound’ is a solo album rather than a collaboration with a band, it did give him more freedom to work with other artists, and have more creative control. It probably helped that Greep is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, as he can play guitar, bass, piano and accordion, as well as sing. Outside of the artist himself, there are a wide variety of instruments played, such as the various percussion instruments, brass (displayed in the introduction of ‘Through a War’), and double-bass, which provides the walking-bass-style bassline in ‘Holy, Holy’.
Perhaps the most impressive thing Geordie Greep did with ‘The New Sound’, was to make it as accessible as it was while still retaining a clear and distinct sound that was for the most part separate from his work with Black Midi. This was a conscious decision from the musician as he wanted to create as much of a blend of his influences as possible, stating that “Some people have been saying, was there an emphasis on making this music more accessible for this album? I wouldn’t necessarily say so, but I think there was more of an emphasis on making it less intentionally obtuse.”(Greep, 2024). This is how ‘The New Sound’ managed to break into the a wider popular field of music. Due to its perceived difference to Geordie Greep’s previous work, and because of the expectation for the artist to make experimental, manic music as a solo continuation from ‘Hellfire’, Black Midi’s final album before the indefinite hiatus. There is still a valid argument that can be made against the accessibility of the album due to the quirks of Greep because of the aforementioned style choices and psychosexual nature of almost every song, but if an artist who focused more on mainstream chart pop made ‘The New Sound’, there would be a high likelihood that it would be rejected by the field, because of how contrasting it would be to their previous work, as a move away from the cultural sphere rather than towards it. Greep’s role within Black Midi was an important part of the fanfare he received in releasing his debut album, indeed, he and the band are inseparable, as the links between the two are mentioned in every review, and every analysis, this one proving no different. This focus on the two parts of Greep’s career is explained with Csikszentmihalyi’s system model, is because of the sustained novelty of Black Midi and therefore its offshoots, as former bassist Cameron Picton’s new band ‘My New Band Believe’ also picked up traction, partially due to the acclaim of his previous band. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) argues that, “too much divisiveness, as well as its opposite, too much uniformity, are unlikely to generate a novelty that will be accepted and preserved“. Black Midi had a sound that pushed the boundaries of the divisiveness, but cultivated a large fandom that pushed them into the realms or popular music. Greep, with his new solo project that while still emulates the music he is debatably more well known for, accesses new audiences with a more palatable blend of smoother genres that allow themselves to be more easily valued, demonstrating how “it can be seen that the entire field is a setting for value distinction and a site of social validation” (McIntyre, 2008) and how he has solidified his role within it.
Holy, Holy as a song plays like many other theatrical, multi-genre rock operas, opening with repeated frenetic one two threes of a guitar playing octaves, before Greep launches into a Carlos Santana-esque guitar solo. The lyrics then begin with a drop in texture, with off beat piano jumping in front of or hiding behind the lyrics, before it evens back out, where a man flaunts himself to a woman, creating a persona of himself where he is known all around the world; “you know my name? Of course you know my name, everyone does, its true”. This reaches a point so extreme where he boasts to his own detriment, linking himself to “all the revolutionaries, all the jihadis too”. The man deifies himself in the title of the song and the chorus behind his lyrics, constantly repeating ‘holy, holy,’ bigging up his character to godlike success. The song climaxes with another crescendo of rapid stab chords, drum hits and a rising screech of a guitar, as it races into another salsa-like section, where the protagonist finally makes his move, asking the woman to dance, ‘on the dancefloor I’m holy, too’. before finally pushing too far, “when he stumbles into a wildly distasteful pickup line. “I’ll bet your pussy is holy, too,” he says, chomping down on the word like it’s a cocktail straw between rear molars.” (Garner, 2024).
The events of the night play out to the backing of samba and jazz rock, with piano, Spanish guitar and numerous percussion instruments. All of these interweave and create a hybrid of genres, defined as “subverting or playing with the conventions of existing musical genres, or adopting an ironic distance from those same conventions” (Shuker, 2005).
Greep’s structural creativity comes into play in the second major section of the song, after the protagonist’s final flourish of an attempt at flirting, where the texture of the song down-shifts, prompting the feeling of an unceremonious end to the night. However, the listener discovers that all of the posturing and events that took place in the first half of the song were all planned out by the protagonist, who it turns out has been paying someone to do all of these things to make himself “look taller” and be more impressive to everyone around him. All of the lyrics after the change in texture are him detailing the events of the first half of the song beforehand, listing demands of what he wants her to do, ending in him asking the woman to compliment him, every line that follows ending in a question, as the listener sees how low this character will go to impress others, and how often he will do it. The lyrics begin to trail off as he lists when they shall next meet, ‘we’ll meet the same time next week and the next week after that too and the next week after that’, all sung in front of swirling pitched percussion, sustained piano and guitar. “Holy, Holy” is the only song on the album that has a video made for it, which provides support for the mask of confidence the protagonist displays, as Geordie Greep sings in a bowling alley, while every bowl, no matter how far wide results in a cut to a strike.
A similar bait and switch to ‘Holy, Holy’ happens in ‘As if Waltz’, a disco inspired track that “starts off in a chugging 4/4, taking a minute to live up to its name, switching time signatures and tempo to inhabit the characteristic 3/4 of the waltz.” (Silverstein, 2026). It has a much more relaxed tone than most of the other songs, and plays initially like a wistful love song, as the protagonist sings about the simple things he could do with his lover, before the switch is revealed that he is projecting all of this towards a prostitute. This continues Greep’s trend of creating characters who cannot attain any form of meaningful human connection, as they will go to absurd lengths or disillusion themselves into some form of success, by their view at least.
Geordie Greep approaches creativity from a range of angles, interweaving dense textures around concise, blunt lyrics. Because he approaches each song as a narrative, describing them more as “transient scenes” than structure events, Greep is able to mix up the texture, rhythms and tempo of each song. His collaborative work with the large amounts of sessions musicians from other domains of music also give him access to ideas that may not necessarily be available if he remained with a single group of people, as the vast amount of supporting musicians could have added their own specific sound, or changed parts if they worked better within the realms of their knowledge. The main constant of the musicians and technical personnel was Seth ‘Shank’ Evans, who played throughout the album, as well as being on lead vocals for ‘Motorbike’, and producing the album as a whole. In the form of the systems model, Geordie Greep in his creation of ‘The New Sound’ used his experience of growing up and performing in South London and the Windmill with Black Midi, which allowed him to expand upon his songwriting ability. In terms of Domain, Greep’s wide variety of musical interests gave him the scope to work with international musicians and access their sound, and most importantly, condense the spread of sounds and styles into an album that still sounds definitively like his own work, and is accepted as such by the Field.
Bibliography
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Shuker, Roy. Popular Music: The Key Concepts: Second Edition. 2005.
Silverstein, Miles. “Hearing Aid.” Hearing Aid , 2019, hearingaidmagazine.com/the-new-sound-geordie-greep. Accessed 16 Apr. 2026.
theneedledrop. “Geordie Greep – the New Sound ALBUM REVIEW.” YouTube, 11 Oct. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhkcHbjy4F4. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.
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