It was meant to be a simple Monday night concert: arrive a bit after the doors opened at 7, listen to the opener at 8, watch the main set at 9 and be home by 11.
Walking out of that venue purely exhausted at midnight after about 3 hours of pure prog rock still felt pretty good, though.
On Jan. 27, Geordie Greep performed at the First Avenue Mainroom in Minneapolis, touring in support of his latest album, “The New Sound,” released in October. Greep is mostly known as the former frontman of the English art-rock-adjacent band Black Midi, ramping up an impressive cult following with only three albums between 2019-2022 before their breakup in August 2024.
Greep’s solo career has proven successful so far, almost doubling the amount of monthly Spotify listeners of Black Midi. But nostalgia still showed at First Avenue – many donned Black Midi merchandise (including myself, albeit borrowed) and understandably freaked out when Greep performed the Black Midi songs “The Defense” and “Dangerous Liaisons” for the first time on tour.
Despite this, Greep still seems focused on his unique sound and influences. While Black Midi leaned toward rock elements, many songs from “The New Sound” take on salsa or jazz-inspired qualities: the bright trumpets on “Terra,” the free-flowing guitar riffs on “Blues,” the oddly danceable, pulsating drums on “Holy, Holy.”
These genres shone through extremely well on stage, working to keep the music exciting yet effortless. Every song performed was followed by a multiple-minute-long outro, with the musicians on stage perfectly improvising, soloing and blending their sounds to make each second new and engrossing. “Bongo Season,” a song that only reaches a little over four minutes on the actual album, was turned into an almost twenty-minute extravaganza. It featured breaks where musicians stood aside to let the aforementioned bongos perform solo, Greep endearingly (yet awkwardly) hitting the cha-cha and audience participation in lyrical chants and claps.
Parts of other songs were slowed down to enhance the theatrical delivery of Greep’s voice as he crooned haunting lyrics like “I wander through cavernous thoughts and regret / Through nothingness, through sagas / That never took place / Your kiss, never given / And your touch, never felt” on the epic, twelve-minute “The Magician.”
These lyrics reveal the concept behind “The New Sound,” a kind of ethnography on men Greep met while drinking in clubs: slimy, rich and purely hopeless, who turn to drugs and countless women to dull the mediocrity of domestic, suburban life. Greep weaves tales of broken marriages, lusts mistaken for love and desperate attempts for fulfillment across the album, personifying the midlife crises of these men.
Despite all of their disgusting narratives, the pure desperation that reeks from Greep’s songs drowns the listener in pity. “For an hour, you’re everything / But only an hour / And what a sweet hour,” Greep laments in “As if Waltz,” a song about doomed, one-sided love between a prostitute and her customer. You feel bad when you listen to how hollow these men are, even if they were the reason for it in the first place.
Because of the lyrical content, it’s tempting to classify Greep as “incel music,” only serving as a relatable and indulgent medium for other manipulative teenage men to bump while they misinterpret “American Psycho.” But to me, that’s an unfair label; this music exists to paint these men in a negative light and expose the dreary corners where a mindset like this is made. Greep expresses this idea on stage — his delivery is strained, and he flicks his hands around uncomfortably. It’s clear that these men of “The New Sound” are only characters, not Greep himself.
Still, these archetypes speak to broader issues of male-dominated fanbases of artists. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen TikToks of men whining about how all music women like is brainless pop. It’s not uncommon to get a look of surprise from men when I talk about artists I love (“Oh, I didn’t expect you to be a [insert band here] fan!”). Additionally, with non-men sharing their experiences of feeling unsafe at concerts and misrepresented in the music itself, these disparities become even clearer. It’s a lack of accessibility and pushing of stereotypes that largely keeps women from these spaces, and it is something worth remedying. Good music is for everyone! It was nice to not have to wait in line for the bathroom at the concert, though.
So, even though I had to Uber back and forth between First Avenue three times because I forgot my ID at home, the Greep concert proved to be everything I wanted and more. I wish every season could be bongo season.
