Having released one of, if not the very best record of 2015 in Ratchet, it was both surprising and disappointing to hear of XL Recordings’ having dropped Shamir Bailey subsequently. Hoping and praying he’d get picked back up again pronto, it’s thus with great relief that, following on from his self-released Hope full-length of this past spring, Father/Daughter Records have since done the honourable thing. For lifted from Revelations, 90’s Kids is proof enough that Richard Russell et al. were rather too hasty when making that particular call: whereas Ratchet was centred around the sort of forceful, Chicago house-inspired pop that, at a push, an embryonic Bailey may have been enjoying circa ’94, this one conversely serves as millennial anthemia; a tribute to the tribulations of a “gross and vain” generation struggling with the “paralysing anxiety” put upon it by societal or, more accurately, parental expectation, placed in turn atop a pared-down proto-ballad. And, while Bailey acknowledges so many are “watch[ing their] futures die,” mercifully, his suddenly looks a whole load more promising once again…
Revelations is available from November 3th via Father/Daughter Records.