Album Review: Opus Kink - 'The Sweet Goodbye'
Brighton sextet craft a debut that will age like fine wine.
It's safe to say that this record has been a long time coming. Bouts of formidably loose EP cuts ran amok since their inception in 2017. The nightmarish trails of "Dust" and "1:18" on 2022's Til the Streams Runs Dry caught a few side-eye glances while their EP "My Eyes, Brother!" two years ago really saw things coming together for the group.
Opus Kink however, don't like to fit into any compartmentalised box you wish to fit them in. You may see them for a ghoulish Weimar-era cabaret. Or a dissonant jazz ensemble telling absurdist fables by candlelight. Or a cathartic rush of '80s post-punk outfit fit for any music hall. But these wouldn't be misjudgements by any stretch. Far off it. In fact, you'd be pretty much on the money.
Made up of Sam Abbo (bassist), Angus Rogers (frontman), Fin Abbo (drummer), Jack Banjo Courtney (trumpet), Jazz Pope (synth) and Jed Morgans (saxophonist), Opus Kink are an untethered no-wave delight that are garishly alluring - and wholly original.
Underscored by their signature horn braising met with Rogers' unruly wit, the jazz-punk outfit have become a force to reckon with by releasing their debut record last week. Nine years in the making - plus three EPs later - The Sweet Goodbye arrives on the Brighton shores with much anticipation.
Inundated with a suave and swagger about it, the ten-track project clocks in at just over three quarters of an hour but appears anything but long-winded. It's an experience made to listen without pause and an invitation to a this nether-world that's been cooked up. Will you take the plunge?
The album's opening cut is one of troubled woes. One of the first singles released, Come Over, Do Me Wrong casts a dire light on a doomed love affair amongst haunting chants. Amongst the darkening backdrop, Angus croons
"These laws are tugging gently / At the low hanging fruit so violently tempting you.." A daring jump into troubled sexual politics equipped with an arsenal of sluggish horns, it's quite the start.
It doesn't get any easier either. Will I Come For You? unleashes skittish lines worthy of a desert brawl while the rallying cry of crude I'm a Pretty Showboy has all the makings of a broken-up crews' sea chanty. Befitting for any lodgings lobby either side of this century, Peckham Nocturne is a number that is all kinds of exquisite while its follow-up - arguably an early favourite among fans - bare I Have to Shine My Sunday Shoes incorporates '80s leather of Lounge Lizards with the contemporaries of of Post Animal. A first supporting role on the record, vocals are enhanced two-fold with the high tones of The New Eves on The Head Tree. A demonic cultist meet-up somewhere beyond Earth's layer, it's funky inflections in the chorus give the hips a shimmy amongst possessed choreography.
6-minute Crucify! is a sprawling cacophony of noises, jarring stabs and flittering echoes on one refrain and a choral-country slow dance on the next, which all swells to an altar in full voice and trumpeter Banjo and saxophonist Jed going hell for leather. A wickedly fun number here as we edge to the closing act on this enthralling debut. Oh, Irony again, offers something spectacularly different. Heavy with a synth line, it unravels into a beautiful parade of this collective just being easy, free and oh so effortless with it all.
Striking a chord in an ever-stagnated landscape, Opus Kink set themselves apart with a debut worth remembering.
Words by Alex Curle
