Sohn - Rennen

Drowned In Sound 60

The musical development of Rennen compared to Tremors is apparent from opening track 'Hard Liquor' - a raw song, frankly confronting alcohol dependency. With lyrics such as: “She'll never see a rainy day/ As long as her hard liquor gets for a day”, it’s clear SOHN has either matured, or grown confident enough to candidly explore sensitive issues. It’s followed up by equally good songs, 'Conrad' and 'Signal'. With 'Conrad', SOHN touches on the pervading mood of Europe’s precarious political climate. The lyrics: “We're lost civilians with the weight of millions / We're pawns in war living in denial” are some of the most insightful lyrics on the album, again showing the lack of fear when it comes to heavy-handed topics. A trait of SOHN’s which hasn’t changed since he released Tremors is his ability to say a lot with few words which is testament to his expression and delivery, as well as the production behind the album.

SOHN spent a month recording the album alone, adopting a nocturnal schedule and the whole record has been infused with the sounds and feelings of nighttime. But sometimes you start to wonder if SOHN himself was falling asleep at some points. Unfortunately, there are too many songs which don’t take you anywhere, especially towards the middle and tail-end of the album. 'Still Waters' is a perfect example of this. You keep on waiting for a spark, some sort of magic to bring the song to life, but it’s a very long waiting game. The construction of the record mirrors Tremors - the more commanding tracks placed at the beginning, and the mellower songs towards the end. And this structure is as much the downfall of Rennen as it was for Tremors.

You get lost in them but not in a good way, and the hypnotic nature of SOHN’s music makes it very easy to phase out, which is a shame, because the closing song, 'Harbour', is a raw and vulnerable gamble that pays off well. It pushes the boundaries with spine-tingling vocals, and leaves you finishing the album feeling as if you’ve listened to something truly magical. It’s just a bit of an uphill battle to get there.

The title, Rennen, is German for 'running', and that’s exactly how this album feels. It opens with energy, before you hit a mental wall in the middle, and then the end comes with that beautiful mixture of accomplishment, and happiness, when you’re happy you’ve pushed through and got to this point.

The Guardian 40

(4AD)

Straddling the worlds of electronica and nu-R&B, British musician Christopher Taylor’s output can be loosely divided into two separate entities. Zoom in and the electronic productions that form the skeleton of his second record come into focus: muggy, oppressive tapestries of pounding percussion and interesting sonic flourishes, from ghoulishly echoing bass to crisp, clip-clopping beats. Take a step back from the digital fiddling, however, and the bigger picture is markedly less appealing. Taylor tends to sing in the abrasively squawky style of all the cod-soulful male vocalists du jour – from Hozier to Ed Sheeran and Rag’n’Bone Man. The pose is compounded by the lyrics: in Hard Liquor, Taylor pursues genre-related imagery in lines such as “My baby don’t make a sound / As long as her hard liquor’s never watered down,” to unequivocally cringeworthy effect. Despite his obvious production chops, Sohn the popstar seems merely an uninspiring iteration of the current trend for singing an irritatingly affected brand of the blues.