Albums to watch

Heavy Heavy

Young Fathers

Heavy Heavy

Fourth full-length album and first in five years from the Edinburgh-based Mercury Prize-winning trio

ADM rating[?]

8.5

Label
Ninja Tune
UK Release date
03/02/2023
US Release date
03/02/2023
  1. 10.0 |   The Skinny

    Young Fathers return with an engrossing new album featuring everything from orchestral pomp to 2-step beats, snarling claustrophobia to R'n'B slow-jams
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  2. 10.0 |   DIY

    Unique, raw and totally joyous
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  3. 10.0 |   NME

    The versatile Edinburgh trio continue their strong run of form with a passionate, soulful and often mesmerising work
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  4. 9.0 |   The Quietus

    Heavy Heavy pushes the physical intensity of their early work to a fervent extreme. Somehow, four albums in, they’ve managed to create something more massive, more explosive and more earnest than ever before
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  5. 9.0 |   Northern Transmissions

    Listening to this music makes you feel like you’re really LIVING. It’s a great accomplishment
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  6. 9.0 |   Loud And Quiet

    There’s human sincerity in their wistful but major-key elation and heartache in its yearning; a brilliant return from a gold-standard band in UK music
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  7. 9.0 |   musicOMH

    Underneath the experimentation and sometimes harsh sound techniques, this is a collection of big pop songs that make up an album crammed full of ideas
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  8. 8.8 |   Sputnik Music (staff)

    Heavy Heavy feels as if they've truly come to some kind of peace. It's a hell of a move, releasing an album this hopeful into a world still licking its wounds and hesitantly embracing intimacy again
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  9. 8.5 |   Under The Radar

    This is freedom music. This is music that implicitly understands the griefs and trials, the “hell on earth” we’re faced with daily, the reality that we all “go in the dirt,” as they sing on “Geronimo”
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  10. 8.1 |   Beats Per Minute

    As a testament to the constant, psychological stresses of being an artist in the 2020s, it is bright, inventive, vulnerable, and rewarding. Pressure making diamonds and all that… maybe there’s something to it
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  11. 8.0 |   Clash

    A stubborn challenge to have fun to despite everything around us; a resolute dance through gritted teeth, an acknowledgement that while the world crumbles, we can stand firm, still love, still dance, still sweat, and still be good to each other
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  12. 8.0 |   Spectrum Culture

    As easy as it is to hear the album’s unexpected beauty and assume that beauty exists in all corners, there’s also the occasional sense that their denseness is meant to be a mask
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  13. 8.0 |   PopMatters

    Young Fathers declare their awareness of what’s going on but take it a step further. Heavy Heavy urges the audience to do the heavy lifting and “have fun”
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  14. 8.0 |   Record Collector

    Their unpredictability and magnetic power remain undimmed by the years
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  15. 8.0 |   Mojo

    Young Fathers remain a frequently forbidding proposition, and all the better for it. Thrillingly, it's still impossible to predict what we might hear next in any of their tracks. Print edition only

  16. 8.0 |   Uncut

    Mostly they don't sound like anyone except themselves, multiplied by a thousand. Print edition only

  17. 8.0 |   Exclaim

    Heavy Heavy may be a little too sweet for long-time listeners, but its massive choruses, strong hooks and ecstatic sound too timely and too powerful to deny
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  18. 8.0 |   Dork

    ‘Heavy Heavy’ finds joyful defiance in the darkest of times, and the result is nothing short of euphoric
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  19. 7.5 |   Pitchfork

    Defined by small acts of joyful resistance, the Edinburgh group’s fourth album is a celebration of music as shared and spontaneous practice
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