Not 20 seconds into
Smiling with No Teeth, the debut album from Canberra, Australia-based musician
Genesis Owusu, we get our first taste of pain: "Feel the fur on the bruise," the vocalist barks from a sea of glitching electronica, giving his "black dog" its first wound. A motif of multiplicity, the creature that proves that namesake for three of the record's tracks holds storied significance -- a poetic reference to depression, a folkloric omen of death -- yet wherever it manifests comes suffering.
Owusu knows what it means to be dancing with scars, to be othered, to be defined against a wall of archetypes. Often, there are no pretenses made: "This is true: I don't like you, I don't like you" runs the chorus of "Don't Need You," while "Whip Cracker" hits an electric note with its statements of defiance. Yet deep-rooted feelings drip into even the smoothest cuts on the album, lining the swoon-ready "Waiting for You" with anxious dwellings and ensuring that "Easy" feels anything but. There's a sense of anxiety, of darkness, that permeates through even the most saccharine of synth lines.
Stylistically,
Owusu traces dimensions of hip-hop, synth pop, funk, and more, never quite settling for long enough to band
Smiling with No Teeth under any single banner. The style/substance balance is a difficult one to negotiate -- "Whip Cracker" transitions from upstart energy to
Daft Punk-ery with minimal grace, while flecks of futuristic dance don't quite land on "I Don't See Colour" -- but for the large part,
Owusu is a blessing to his genres, gifting them with his vivid personality and potent narrative threads. Questions of cohesion are entirely misplaced. The riverside piano of "A Song About Fishing" lands neatly among the ephemeral dance of "Easy" and the lone-road jazz of "No Looking Back," bound to one another by their creator's singular presence.
Owusu's "black dog" is one charged with misery, prejudice, and anxiety, a stray figure clouded by personal struggles and vast, smothering questions -- and on
Smiling with No Teeth, the Canberra vocalist manifests this figure in all its bittersweet forms. ~ David Crone