King Krule
“Rock Bottom”
Rock Bottom 7″ (Rinse, out 08/25)
King Krule’s music is the audio equivalent of Greg Oden. I’m not talking about the bad knees, awful beard, or gigantic peni… er, hands. Oden is still in his mid-twenties, but he’s looked like he’s about 41 since he was in high school. The artist formally known as Zoo Kid (né Archy Marshall) is still a couple of years away from his 20th birthday, but he sounds and writes like a 60-some-odd year-old Mississippi Delta blues man. For the better part of three years, he’s been crafting affecting, musically progressive gutter soul, and he just continues to get better.
Coming off the back of his excellent self-titled 2011 EP (and its a-fucking-mazing lead single “The Noose of Jah City”), “Rock Bottom” has all the hallmarks of a Marshall classic: razor-sharp guitar stabs, reflective lyrics, and his dropdead vocals, which lie somewhere between Joe Strummer after ten packs of Marlboro reds and a feral coyote. To top it off, he throws in a nod to a key song on one of my favorite albums of all time. Imagine how good he’ll get when he can legally drink!
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And just because it’s still that fucking brilliant, check out “The Noose of Jah City,” my third favorite track of 2011.
