I’ve always been a sucker for a music video with some silly dancing in it and the second track from the enigmatic Black Fly ticks all those boxes. Add in his unusual slightly slurred vocal, which I previously compared to Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs and Pete Doherty but would also now like to compare to Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, plus a frenzy of dark 80’s referencing robot synth sounds and you’ve got another one of those glorious singles for people that prefer their music to try to stand out rather than fit in. Let’s face it there are a lot of pop stars both new and old trying to fit in rather too hard right now - and that makes the pop landscape very boring. Two songs in (listen to his first I Don’t Know here) and Black Fly is like an excellent courier of pop music, delivering all the goods. Black Fly - Sign 2 (Video)
Well this is f*cking marvellous. I have no idea who Black Fly is. The standard Google search reveals lots of references to two winged insects, a hip-hop artist from about 5 years ago and various other companies and brands, but nothing of this solo artist who I’m told makes music from his bedroom in the backwoods of Vermont. However, despite little context to find let me try and give you some. I Don’t Know is Black Fly’s debut song. As I said it’s f*cking marvellous. Why? Because it’s rather unique. There’s a lot of synth pop that flows through these pages, but most of it features vocals that are in some way glossy and crystal. Black Fly isn’t. His voice is huskily nodular, slightly slurred and sleepy, like a modern-day Pete Doherty of The Libertines or Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs, but with real soul and beauty. It’s as if an indie rock singer has stumbled into the wrong room and come out with a keyboard under his arm rather than a guitar. It’s a wonderful contrast. You’ll find virtually all of the websites and blogs that have featured this song so far describing it as gothic. I’m not so sure about that as a categorisation. I don’t hear the eerie dark despair I would expect to find in something categorised as gothic, although the lyrics, which talk of ‘nasty things you do’, ‘violence’ and ‘cancer’ certainly don’t equate with partying all night long in da club. But what I hear musically is skin-prickling radiance and moments of tenderness, particularly when Black Fly sings “you can never take our memories” and the song bursts into a rainbow of 80’s styled tension building electronics. I Don't Know was mixed by David Tolomei (Beach House, Dirty Projectors and most tellingly Future Islands, who I can see some similarity with in terms of the unusual vocal / electronic mix). An intriguingly good debut. Black Fly - I Don't Know
