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★★★★★
There are artists who race to deliver a debut album far too quickly and pay the price for it, and others who take a very long time but make it absolutely worth it. Opus Kink fall squarely in the latter category. Coming at the end of an impressive string of EPs and single releases, their first long play, ‘The Sweet Goodbye’, feels less like a debut and more like the culmination of a very long path, and its title is very fitting as the record reads in places like the wrapping up of a chapter. This is not the beginning of a trajectory; the band has had a fair amount of sweat and tears to get here, and they have poured them all into this record. The more confrontational sides of it are born in part from this struggle, and there is more than one place in which the lyrics seem propelled by a frustration with the constraints of what it is to be an artist in the present time. The delivery of this album - a delivery in the sense of a birth, feeling almost like a physiological act, blood-drenched and visceral - has come in part through the acceptance of those constraints, with an almost masochistic glee in the participation of the theatre of public artistry (“I’m a pretty showboy/I don’t want to be free”, echo the lyrics of ‘I’m A Pretty Showboy’, the first single fans have heard from the record). It has also come, however, through sustained defiance. If the first element was the one that emerged most strongly from the early singles, the second is the one that lingers in the air long after the last note of the record has faded.
‘The Last Goodbye’ is a confrontational record. It is challenging, confident in its own voice, has a very clear idea of what it wants to do, and cares not a bit for the comfort or the expectations of its listener. If you are into this, it seems to say, you’re in for the ride of your life. If you’re not, buckle up, because that ride is going to be relentless and will offer no accommodation; but you might find yourself thinking about it after it’s done. There is an unnerving list of unspoken rules that have emerged for music in recent years: the need to present the TikTok-friendly snippet, the sassy lyric that can be turned into a meme, the welcoming aesthetic that fits neatly into the listener’s comfort zone, the clearly-defined sub-sub-genre allowing you to know exactly what you’re getting into. None of this is present here. ‘The Last Goodbye’ defies genre, expanding the band’s voice even further than it was already stretched. Familiar country suggestions still echo through the notes of tracks like the sweeping, almost orchestral ‘Peckham Nocturne’ or the gritty cavalcade that is ‘Crucify!’, but there is so much more buzzing through these ten tracks. Opener ‘Come Over, Do Me Wrong’ is the most Opus Kink of them all, with lyrics and a delivery to make Tom Waits proud and a punk bite to it. ‘The Head Tree’ offers a collaboration with fellow Brightonians The New Eves, which infuses the track with folk ambience and just a touch of the black magicks. ‘Crucify!’ is a cheeky, provocative, cavalcade of a song, full of twists and turns, switching deadly serious at just the right moment. Title track ‘The Sweet Goodbye’ has an unexpected thread of Brit-rock running through an otherwise experimental weave, punctuated by a middle section that smashes it all to pieces in the most unexpected way. ‘I Have To Shine My Sunday Shoes’ toys, somehow, with gospel, but against a punk-rock backdrop. There is even a bit of EDM sneaking through, if you go looking for it.
And yet the voice of this album is incredibly cohesive. Opus Kink know exactly what they sound like. They know what they want to say and how they want to say it, and lean into it unrepentantly. Their trademark use of chaotic brass acts as a glue that holds it all together, as does the lurid poetry of the lyrics. So much of the album feels sultry in a sticky way, or snarling with the unrestrained anger of artistry raging against a cage it’s being shoved into. There are no TikTok riffs here, but there is a reckless embracing of discomfort that makes the record feel truly powerful. The lyrics, another Opus Kink trademark, are sharp-edged throughout, undiluted and carefully curated: possibly the best way to appreciate this record is to listen to it twice in quick succession, a first time to be carried by the visceral impulse of the music and then a second to actually follow the words and realise how much deeper this rabbit hole runs. “I try, like any good man/to distinguish my boredom from pain” are the very first words spoken on this record; everything that follows is almost in defiance of that. There is no boredom to be found in these tracks, although deconstructions of pain abound.
This is a gem of a record, quite possibly one of the strongest of the year so far, certainly one of the most confident first albums the alternative scene has produced in recent years. Its determined and almost cheerful rule-breaking is a perfect showcase of the potential this kind of music has when it is unleashed without restraints. It channels a whiff of the sweat and a taste of the adrenaline that anyone who has attended this band’s live outings will have grown very familiar with. Much as it sounds like the end of a chapter, it also sounds like a prelude to the next - and however long the wait will be for that, it promises it will be, once again, worth it.
Chiara Strazzulla
Image: ‘The Sweet Goodbye’ Official Album Cover
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