It has been a long three years since King Krule last blessed their fans with new music. The group’s last album, Man Alive!, released just in time for COVID-19 to stop their planned tour going ahead. Since then King Krule’s frontman Archy Marshall has largely remained quiet. A live album was released in 2021, and the group recently toured briefly in Europe and America. During that tour, fans excitedly recorded and posted new songs being played. Those few tracks now have life.
King Krule have now returned with Space Heavy, a new album with familiar stylistic traits from the group. Marshall’s now infamous deep voice and cockney accent oscillates between speaking and singing throughout, with his lethargic vocal style still intact. His poetic lyrical style has changed slightly, but remains his own. The focuses seem to have shifted slightly – away from the crushing loneliness towards marginally warmer and more hopeful ideas. Where the group’s previous albums have shown a manic and higher energy on some tracks – Man Alive! has the soul-shakingly loud ‘Stoned Again’, for example – Space Heavy is almost constantly slow. Even the most uplifting song on the album, ‘Seaforth’, feels sleepy and stumbling.
Every track on Space Heavy is (as the title suggests) burdened with a certain heaviness. Not necessarily in its tone, though Marshall’s usually melancholic lyricism is still present, but more in its slow-core rock stylings. The tracks with faster pacing such as ‘Hamburgerphobia’ or ‘Pink Shell’ still have a distinctive murkiness to them, with thin filters over Marshall’s voice and a tiredness communicated through the skilful playing of the other band members. This makes the brief, loud moments on the record all the more powerful when they do arrive. ‘Our Vacuum’ begins slow, but Marshall’s sudden and aggressive shouting at times is seriously striking. The same can be said for the repetitive shouting on the title track.
Another King Krule trademark is the merging of multiple genres. Space Heavy is more rock-focused than King Krule have been previously, but the influence of other genres is still clear. There are beautiful, jazzy instrumental moments on a handful of tracks and the album’s closer ‘Wednesday Overcast’ is a stripped-back spoken word poem set primarily to a repetitive, thumping drum.
The palpable moodiness of Space Heavy is what makes it a powerful and stylistically striking album. It doesn’t show a change in style for King Krule, but it’s clear that change isn’t their intention. Rather, they appear to be aiming to master their slow style. The music is refined and punchy, confident and unique. Whenever the group do try to incorporate new elements on Space Heavy, though, they do it with great success. The album’s one feature from Raveena makes ‘Seagirl’ a clear stand-out, and ‘Wednesday Overcast’s strings make it distinguished.
Overall, Space Heavy is a lethargic and downtrodden album, but in all of the right ways. King Krule’s usual bleakness remains, but the hope explored on some tracks creates a strong contrast with those sadder songs. The album becomes particularly powerful in its final two tracks, both of which are particularly daring in their sound. ‘If Only It Was Warmth’ is one of the best songs that the band have made to date, and it highlights the best qualities of the album more generally. Fans of King Krule will find much to enjoy here, but those who are unfamiliar may find the record somewhat inaccessible upon first listen due to its slow pace and dour mood.
Words by Reece Beckett
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