Humour: Studying Greek
Vinyl | CD | Digital
Launched eighth August 2025
Humour aren’t any laughing matter. Actually, their seriousness has solely elevated. Adam Brady evaluations the debut LP from the Scottish quintet
Ready is usually a ache within the proverbial. You already know it’s coming, you need it to reach. For Humour, the Glasgow-based five-piece that emerged post-COVID with their debut EP Pure Distress in 2022 and shortly adopted that up with 2023’s A Small Crowd Gathered To Watch Me, the anticipate us has allowed them to craft a stellar debut LP, Studying Greek.
Andreas Christodoulidis (vocals), Ross Patrizio (guitar), Jack Lyall (guitar), Ruairidh Smith (drums), and Lewis Doig (bass) have spent the time since A Small Crowed Gathered To Watch Me working with concepts, discarding others, centering round a theme that started with Christodoulidis studying, nicely, Greek. However that, in the end, wasn’t sufficient:
“The thought of studying Greek stopped being nearly studying the language. It turned about exploring and investing within the issues that make one Greek or give one a way of nationwide identification, particularly as somebody who’s second era. It’s not a lot about Greece as about my household and that feeling. It’s about feeling disconnected, nearly such as you’re outdoors of your individual life, which is one thing I’ve written about quite a bit. “Studying Greek” was an try and get again into my life and really feel like myself once more.”
The story weaving that has up to now been a trademark of Christodoulidis’s lyrics has at all times had a powerful private side; this side has a higher sense of poignancy. Curiously, the title monitor options no lyrics however is as an alternative a recording of Christodoulidis and his father, who lived in Greece throughout the right-wing army junta (1967-1974), studying On Philhellenes Avenue by Greek author, surrealist poet, and photographer Andreas Embiriko. It’s quick and candy, and the dialog between the 2 generations connecting over the sharing of their cultural heritage is likely one of the most heartwarming issues I’ve heard in years. It’s most definitely the emotional centre of the album. At varied different factors throughout the album, additional snippets of inter-generational discourse could be heard.
The metaphorical shadow of Christodoulidis’s patrilineal ancestry is forged additional by Soiled Bread, which is about his grandfather’s habits as an previous man. An additional nod to Christodoulidis’s seek for himself by means of his heritage is the title of the track, taken from a line of a track by Sotiria Bellou, a rebetiko singer who, by means of her left-leaning activism, by no means acquired the popularity throughout her life she deserved.
Musically, there was an evolution to Humour’s “bizarre” post-punk tendencies. Opener Neighbours is a post-hardcore pounder that has Christodoulidis shredding his vocals concurrently Patrizio and Lyall shred their guitar strings. The general capacity of Patrizio, Lyall, Doig, and Smith to match the paranoiac lyric is simply the primary instance of Humour taking their time reaps rewards.
Memorial is a daring tackle the story of Andromache from her viewpoint as Hector, her husband and King of Troy, prepares to enter the battlefield for what would be the final time. Lack of originality and even copying one’s self is the topic of Plagiarist, which additionally sees the return of the “bizarre” post-punk sound.
One of many quite a few issues that units Humour aside from their friends is Christodoulidis’s voice. From the get-go, his affected stuttering and pitching has been one of many band’s USPs. It’s toned down right here on Studying Greek, however that’s no dangerous factor. The selecting of the place and when it’s deployed, and the place and when it’s not deployed is essential.
I Solely Have Eyes For You, a track about Christodoulidis’s melancholy he was struggling with when his sister bought married and was unable to really feel the happiness he believes he ought to have felt, options Theo Bleak. The fantastic concord within the refrain would have suffered immeasurably if he hadn’t sung it straight; whereas on I Knew We’d Speak About It One Day it’s use on the chorus “I did one thing, I remorse it” conveys remorse, regret, confusion, and in the end defiance.
It’s secure to say that not solely have Humour met expectations with Studying Greek, they’ve exceeded them. The emotional content material and impactful lyrical content material is matched by the music. It’s highly effective, heartrending, private and exploratory. If that is what we get ready for his or her first album, then the world, and never simply Greece, is Humour’s oyster.
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All phrases by Adam Brady, who hosts The Adam Brady Present on Louder Than Battle Radio. You will discover his writer’s archive right here
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