Existential gloom is a key taste of The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Gentle, and whereas that title implies duality, darkness usually has the higher hand. Acquainted tropes of despair get an intensive exercise: “The black canine follows me as I stroll,” he raps on “Every Day Offers.” “The stroll of disgrace is my day by day commute,” goes “Stroll of Disgrace.” “Shiny Sunny Day” is something however, three-and-a-half minutes of stormy ideas and self-recrimination that closes its curtains to the world. Skinner at his greatest has a knack for spinning tales and drawing characters, however right here he appears extra thinking about choosing over his personal midlife disaster. Whereas the choice to keep away from narrative exposition seems intentional, the songs can lose momentum, drifting off into lyrical non sequitur and navel-gazing.
Some daring musical decisions hold issues shifting, even when the storyline flags. “Gonna Harm When This Is Over” unfurls lazily opiated raps over droning sitar, whereas the title observe loops a dusty pattern of ragtime jazz. A pair songs summon the magic of yore: “Shake Fingers With Shadows” captures the feeling of clubbing as darkness provides strategy to daybreak, Skinner’s elegiac nightlife poetry unfolding over punchy kicks and dancehall zaps. The closing “Good Outdated Daze,” in the meantime, provides to the rising catalog of songs designed to evoke the expertise of using a London evening bus. Most music on this matter is rooted in wet Burial-esque melancholy, however Skinner’s take is a celebration of the evening bus as a multicultural melting pot, a microcosm of town at giant. “The evening bus residence is sort of a evening bus membership,” he muses over gospel sighs, and it’s the album’s warmest, most communal second.
As for the movie this music accompanies, it’s formidable and stuffed with concepts however let down by picket appearing and a convoluted plot. Skinner’s high-water mark of narrative fiction stays 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come for Free, an album that labored each as a set of standalone tracks and as a broader story arc—with a twist that felt genuinely redemptive. By comparability, The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Gentle is dishevelled and unfocused. If he desires to promote a promise of salvation, he wants a greater story to inform.
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