Halfway by means of “BABY BABY,” a spotlight of the superb new Nourished by Time file, there’s a sudden, descending synth swell, coupled with a delirious groan: Child, child, child, child, child, child! This chorus, “child, child,” is the centerpiece of the music, and so far, it has been mellow: a muttered coo, spoken like a groggy lover. As a vocalist, Marcus Brown is dynamic and world-weary, his elastic vary spanning the hope and heartbreak of life in a withering empire. Weightless as his music could sound, it’s burdened by capitalist rot, which is what makes it wrenching—pinpointing the exact second you understand, like many Individuals, that you’re fucked. This despair floods “BABY BABY,” and at this particular juncture, when he trades his mutter for a moan, it curdles into one thing agonizing. Not tender, “child, child” turns into a cry for mercy: the tipping level between having every thing and having it taken from you.
Brown, an outspoken 31 12 months previous from Baltimore, makes music for the issues our dystopia steals from us. The moniker “Nourished by Time,” which borrows from “Guided by Voices,” is a press release of course of: a “reminder,” Brown defined final 12 months, “that in the event you put your power and put your love and coronary heart into one thing, it has no alternative however to bloom.” As in his music, there’s a bleak subtext to this stunning sentiment. Vitality, love, and coronary heart—human issues—are incompatible with late-stage capitalism, a system the place time shouldn’t be nurtured, however floor, together with folks, into revenue. His debut, 2023’s Erotic Probiotic 2, had a mournful varnish, a memorial service for hopes crushed and dragged away on conveyor belts. On “Employees Interlude,” when he pleaded “Don’t make me wait so lengthy,” it felt like a meta-commentary: For Black, working-class Individuals, time could by no means arrive to nourish you in any respect.
The historical past of revolution, in America, is peppered with cries of Wait! Be affected person with the system. Brown’s music is inextricable from this historical past, which nearly makes “Nourished by Time” really feel winking, sarcastic. The sensation is extra biting than ever on The Passionate Ones, whose titular characters, weary of ready, wrestle for his or her humanity in a dehumanizing period. Not like Brown’s prior releases, The Passionate Ones renders oppression as materially dirty, earthbound, suffocating. The place Erotic Probiotic 2 was hypnagogic in spirit—drawing from ’80s pastiche, sports-television samples, echo-heavy harmonies—this LP foregrounds rawer, extra bodily parts, with out sacrificing Brown’s booming, atmospheric textures. For a musician so adept at concocting dreamscapes, this renewed iteration of post-R&B, punk-tinged and apoplectic, feels bluntly anti-escapist, as if to say: No, this isn’t music to dissociate to. These instances name for urgency.