Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW
WORDS: MATT OLIVER

Danny Lover  ‘The Church Restaurant Official Soundtrack’
Blah Records,  11^th August 2017

Anyone who’s read past Rapture & Verse columns won’t have failed to notice the recurring themes of the seedy and illicit from Bisk, Sam Zircon, Morriarchi, Lee Scott and Stinkin Slumrock that have put Blah Records on the map of UK hip-hop’s nether regions. Almost reinventing, or inverting, the concept of chopped and screwed (an infamous, Southern United States technique of slowing down albums until the source material becomes an almost out of body experience), their dazed means of sloth-hop, teetering against the tide in a substance-addled state of straitjacketed comfort, is distinctive the moment it feels like setting up shop underneath the flesh.

So where does Ontario’s Danny Lover fit into all this?

Like Blah’s aforementioned wigged out lieutenants, Lover is a scabrous vessel for stuffing up the ether, building up a lo-fi back catalogue (‘Career Suicide’ – described by R&V as “like a head-on smash in slo-mo” – ‘Cigarette Kisses, Death Wishes’, ‘My Best Friends Keep Dying’ – on paper, decorating Lover with scythe and cowl), groping at stooping beats and going way past an attack of the munchies. Don’t think because he’s more withdrawn/broken than some of his label mates, that he’s any less dialed in or aware of how to pimp the vibe into something gratifyingly gratuitous.





Reducing all the glamour from hip-hop’s ostentatious ways, Lover may be treading water, but The Church Restaurant… goes beyond the blasé. Production from his go-to guy, the late 19 Thou$and, is a distillation of once was: not stark or even empty as you might anticipate, its business done in the dying embers. ‘Secrets’ has all the brags of a flosser: the fact eyes are rolling beyond the skull adds a different, unsettling dimension of hip-hop showmanship. The IDGAF persona is in its own way, harder to rationalise (as in you must be an easier target when you’re of a flaky-sounding mind state), and even harder to combat as an opponent when time either stands still or travels backwards. In the battle of bark versus bite, once Lover’s gummy venom soaks in, slow surrender becomes inexplicably inevitable.

‘Skinny Pimp’ lolls pleasantly in a soft focus string loop, but the strung out vibe both conveys and emits paralysis. On ‘Food’ an airy, fading flashback, Lover sounds like he’s doing his best to cut through with rhymer’s authority: the fact he’s unsuccessful, wanting to leap into the front row but finding his feet stuck, is part of the album’s temptation, leaving it to MiCon and Mos Pants to pep things up akin to scoffing on forbidden fruit. A touch of emotional fragility on ‘Rose Garden’ adds and asks more questions of the personality presumed too baked to tap into anything private, and ‘Peel Street High’ is the benchmark for the album’s wonderland offering what-could-have-been; washed out swagger undercut with bass, lapsed boom bap and debilitation.

A live translation must be 99% out of the question, and you’re not getting quotable by the barrel either. Because of the ironic, laconic delivery coming desert-dry, you may happen upon a one-liner that reaches catchphrase/t-shirt slogan status: Lee Scott’s trademark Scouse sneer alongside Salar on ‘Rare Nirvana’, smears a can’t-be-arsed guitar loop thinking it’s still gonna make it as a rock star. If birds are already circling your head and pink elephants are regularly at eye level, curiosity will get the better of you as the cult of ‘The Church…’ compels you.