Young Fathers entice us this week with their new single, In My View, and the announcement of their third album, Cocoa Sugar. The Scotland-based trio, made up of Alloysious Massaquoi, Graham ‘G’ Hastings and Kayus Bankole, are in suitably fierce form here, their brooding, uncompromising output sounding as lean and vital as ever.

In My View tells of sin, greed and personal advancement while the accompanying video, directed by Jack Whiteley, acts as a film-within-a-film through which a succession of obscure characters play on the viewer’s wrought emotions. Equal parts damning and uplifting, this is the gospel according to Young Fathers...

Cocoa Sugar is out on 9 March and is the highly anticipated follow up to 2014’s Mercury Prize-winning DEAD and 2015’s White Men Are Black Men Too. If the surreal album artwork by Tom Hingston is anything to go by, its 12 tracks will not be breezy. Best be prepared to have your heart ripped apart and then sewn back together again.

Last year saw the band make waves with the successful single Only God Knows for the T2 film soundtrack, and the album preview track, Lord. Now they look set to own 2018 as they embark on a UK and European tour throughout March and April before joining their soulmates Massive Attack at The Eden Project in June for what will be no doubt be an emotive live performance. As the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…

Cocoa Sugar is out 9 March on Ninja Tune

Visit Young Fathers
Published on 19/01/2018