Straddling the worlds of electronica and nu-R&B, British musician Christopher Taylor’s output can be loosely divided into two separate entities. Zoom in and the electronic productions that form the skeleton of his second record come into focus: muggy, oppressive tapestries of pounding percussion and interesting sonic flourishes, from ghoulishly echoing bass to crisp, clip-clopping beats. Take a step back from the digital fiddling, however, and the bigger picture is markedly less appealing. Taylor tends to sing in the abrasively squawky style of all the cod-soulful male vocalists du jour – from Hozier to Ed Sheeran and Rag’n’Bone Man. The pose is compounded by the lyrics: in Hard Liquor, Taylor pursues genre-related imagery in lines such as “My baby don’t make a sound / As long as her hard liquor’s never watered down,” to unequivocally cringeworthy effect. Despite his obvious production chops, Sohn the popstar seems merely an uninspiring iteration of the current trend for singing an irritatingly affected brand of the blues.
