Briggs Always Was

Briggs Always Was: Who’d’ve thought in this, August 2020, we’d get the least explicitly political, or at least the least topical Briggs record yet.

Among the references to Wu Tang, Lu Kang, “straight to your dome like a sox hat”, Jim Carrey, Brando and Apocalypse Now, Uncle Fester and getting twisted off of that yak, there’s almost nothing, apart from the title maybe, that would send any of his Enchanted co-writers to Wikipedia.

But the beats are rich — sinewy chiming synths above roiling, churning bass. The flow diverse and assured — peaking on the trappy That’s Money — and the guests are well chosen. Go To War, rising and subsiding around Thelma Plum’s hook is probably the moment of the EP, the point at which everything good about it peaks.

Still, I’m looking forward to the album that COVID delayed, and not just because of the ways Always Was succeeds.