Serpentwithfeet: Grip review – glossy, lustful tribute to queer black clubland | Dance music

This isn’t Josiah Wise’s coming out album. Almost everything the American with stunning Christian-choir vocals has recorded as Serpentwithfeet is stamped with the desire lines of queer love. Yet Grip is far more lascivious and uninhibited than 2021’s love-fuddled Deacon, with a glossy, clubby feel that’s bounds away from the unearthly, recherché goth-gospel pioneered on his debut, Soil. The extroversion is because Grip soundtracks Heart of Brick, Wise’s 2023 theatre production depicting black gay nightclubs – the lands where he bloomed, no longer a seed buried in the long shadow of the church.

However, Wise’s exultant, say-anything honesty (“Choke me now, fuck me now/ Upload that dick into the cloud!”) is sometimes dulled by generic songwriting and overused Auto-Tune. The features don’t bring much to the party either, bar texture against Wise’s bejewelled, supernatural keening. Ty Dolla $ign’s everyday sexism is tedious, while Mick Jenkins’s awkward flow hobbles the promising Black Air Force. Nothing is as indelible or unhinged as Wise’s alt-R&B classics Four Ethers and Cherubim, although both guitar-driven Spades and Safe Word are brilliant here. Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.

This isn’t Josiah Wise’s coming out album. Almost everything the American with stunning Christian-choir vocals has recorded as Serpentwithfeet is stamped with the desire lines of queer love. Yet Grip is far more lascivious and uninhibited than 2021’s love-fuddled Deacon, with a glossy, clubby feel that’s bounds away from the unearthly, recherché goth-gospel pioneered on his debut, Soil. The extroversion is because Grip soundtracks Heart of Brick, Wise’s 2023 theatre production depicting black gay nightclubs – the lands where he bloomed, no longer a seed buried in the long shadow of the church.

However, Wise’s exultant, say-anything honesty (“Choke me now, fuck me now/ Upload that dick into the cloud!”) is sometimes dulled by generic songwriting and overused Auto-Tune. The features don’t bring much to the party either, bar texture against Wise’s bejewelled, supernatural keening. Ty Dolla $ign’s everyday sexism is tedious, while Mick Jenkins’s awkward flow hobbles the promising Black Air Force. Nothing is as indelible or unhinged as Wise’s alt-R&B classics Four Ethers and Cherubim, although both guitar-driven Spades and Safe Word are brilliant here. Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.