The rapturous reaction to Marcus Brown’s debut album as Nourished by means of Time, 2023’s Erotic Probiotic 2, has come to appear extra like future. After years of bizarre jobs, false begins, and aborted creative experiments, the Baltimore local and Berklee School of Tune alum spent COVID holed up in his oldsters’ basement concocting a brand new sound, blithely unconcerned about what the sector would possibly suppose. Armed with Ableton, electrical guitar, and a Roland Juno-106 synthesizer, Brown combined dream pop, ’80s R&B, deep space, electro-funk, hip-hop, and Baltimore membership in bold, authentic techniques whilst expressing socialist concepts and non secular considerations in an earnest, bare baritone redolent of the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan and Jodeci’s Okay-Ci Hailey. It’s tough to fathom the report as a debut; it has the timeworn air of an album that took years to make—and the fast-and-free ethos of a practiced savant after all keen to let it fly.
Since Erotic Probiotic 2’s free up ultimate spring, Brown has landed a number of new enthusiasts, important acclaim, cross-the-pond excursion dates, and a freshly inked maintain XL Recordings, although he’s transform skeptical of such standard measures of good fortune. “That is now an extension of my hard work,” he mentioned in a contemporary interview. “It’s every other model of running at Complete Meals, simply, like, so much cooler.” Nourished by means of Time’s newest EP, Catching Chickens, expands upon of Erotic Probiotic 2’s sprawling, singular universe whilst additionally hinting at new sounds, shapes, and textures he would possibly discover down the street. As ever, incisive political insights and poignant feelings shine throughout the mutant style melds, reaffirming the sneakily transgressive nature of Brown’s solution to pop.
At its very best, Catching Chickens subverts playful, exuberant moods with biting social remark. On opener “Hell of a Experience,” Brown laments the ills of late-stage capitalism over ’80s dance euphoria: “Youngsters caught within the matrix/They know when it’s fiction/Younger, inhaling them toxins/Used to have a 3rd position now they were given no choices.” After the refrain (“the crimson, the blue, or even the white… by no means felt like mine”), the tune dissolves into hole guitars and warbling synths, sketching an ambiguous sonic image of what societal cave in would possibly really feel like: terrifying but cathartic, keeping apart but inspiring. Lead unmarried “Hand on Me” bops with stretchy synths and vocal harmonies, detailing a forlorn but impassioned love—romantic or another way—that’s each comforting and psychosis-inducing. Those songs mirror Brown’s uncanny skill to sofa advanced subject material in pleasant DIY pop. They by no means pressure to mesh shape with content material; as a substitute, the 2 are all the time inextricably and easily related.
