Another piece of the effort is a short documentary (which you can watch here) directed by filmmaker Will Robson-Scott. "This book is a scrapbook of our relationship and how we see the world," Archy told me.
Reflecting the Internet-wary Marshall's preference for tangible experiences, the core of A New Place 2 Drown is a 208-page coffee-table tome of artwork, poems and photographs assembled in collaboration with his brother, the visual artist Jack Marshall. That fact is on vivid, street-level display in Marshall's new mixed-media project, A New Place 2 Drown, his first major release since his 2013 debut album, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon. His songs have earned plaudits from Beyonce and have been covered by Willow Smith, but the red-headed 21-year-old with a distinctive baritone shows little interest in the world beyond his neighborhood in southeast London. In fact, it seems safe to say that the relationship between the London singer, songwriter and producer better known as King Krule and popular culture in general is a one-way street. At it’s best, his voice can cut like a blunt knife and then, if you’re nice, lick your wounds.Drake's viral hit "Hotline Bling" has been viewed by millions and has launched meme after meme on social media, but when asked about the rapper, Archy Marshall pleads ignorance. Whereas “A New Place 2 Drown” wallows in its influences – jazz fusion and 1990s East Coast hip hop – “6 Feet Beneath the Moon” put Archy’s raw, bruised howl centre-stage. His album as King Krule took a different approach. On “Eye’s Drift” you can hardly even hear his languorous monotone. We seem to have caught him at home, murmuring about love and loss, “guilt and urges”, but often these murmurs sink beneath the album’s laconic beat.
The way he sings them, these lines have the ring of truth.īut the moments when his vocals come to the fore are disappointingly rare. He quietly mumbles, as if in an aside to himself, then drags out the “well” so that it sounds like the anguish has caught in his throat. On “Swell” he sings, “Well I might have found a new place to drown/My sorrows and everything else/Fuck! My mental health!/Went down the drain as well!” Surrounded by doodles in the book, these verses read like melodramatic juvenilia, but on the album Archy delivers them with visceral emotion. Poetry they are not.īut it’s a testament to the power of his voice that he can lift lines that seem lumpen or overwrought.
But lyrics that are sung are not the same as stanzas that are read. On the King Krule track “Baby Blue” he sings, “My sandpaper sigh/engraves a line/into the rust of your tongue”. Leafing through the pages, every now and then you happen upon one of Archy’s poems or songs. His fingerprints are all over the book, with its strange and intriguing cartoons and graffiti. While it’s a treat to see Archy in the flesh – talking, singing, horsing around – it’s odd that although we see Jack, we never hear him. The film is superior to the book: it showcases both brothers’ art and conjures a mood of street-wise noir, doing in five minutes what the book struggles to do in over 100 pages. A multimedia project by Archy and his brother Jack, it comprises three different things: a book containing Archy’s lyrics, Jack’s illustrations and photos of their life in south London the album, cast as the soundtrack to the book and a short film, which revisits the places and people captured by the photos, occasionally superimposes Jack’s illustrations over these images, and sets it all to Archy’s music. “A New Place 2 Drown” isn’t just an album. It’s a kind of coming-of-age – but one whose power is diminished by the way the record’s murky sounds submerge his vocals. The voice on “A New Place 2 Drown” belongs to Archy Marshall and to him alone. On his ambitious second album, released last week, the personas have been shed.
But most people know him as King Krule, and it was the debut album he put out under that name, “6 Feet Beneath the Moon”, that won him a nomination for the BBC’s Sound of 2013. Like a lot of teenagers, he experimented with showing one face to the world then another: first as Zoo Kid, then DJ JD Sports and Edgar the Beatmaker. He astonished listeners with his voice, an unexpectedly deep baritone for someone so slight and scrappy. He first started releasing stark, heartfelt songs five years ago while he was a student at the BRIT School for Performing Arts in Croydon, south-east London. Archy Marshall is 21 years old, but you wouldn’t know it to listen to him.