Is there a Glam revival? If there is – and this would seem to suggest as much – then it’s crept up on me unawares. Rather like that cat Mud sang about. Apparently this video has gone viral, and I can see why: it’s like a pastiche of something from an early 70s Top of the Pops.
You may be struggling to know how to say that name but I know – because Gyasi’s latest album is helpfully titled “Pronounced Jah-see.” The previous one – his 2019 debut – was called Androgyne, though I think it would have been better as Androgyne Genie myself.
What else can I tell you? Well, he’s got a good publicist, evidently, and a campaign that aims to create a mysterious identity around him. A press release says he was “raised by bohemian parents in the woods of a West Virginia holler,” and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Furthermore, he is described as a “lipstick-wearing guitar-shredding peacock from the woods” (the same West Virginia woods, presumably), which has a certain ring of metaphorical truth.
He also claims to approach his music “as an all-encompassing art piece, using fashion, storytelling and his guitar to create a world for his music.” And to have a burning passion “to bring rock’n’roll into the 21st century”.
Which is odd, as everything about his video, his sound, and his clothes, suggests he’s bringing it back to the 20th century.
Despite all that…. possibly because of all that… I do quite like his slavish fusion of Bolan and Bowie and Sweet. Once, at least.