House Anxiety / Ourness · March 5, 2021
Smiling with No Teeth, the debut album by Ghanian-Australian artist Genesis Owusu, is an incredibly striking first showing. The depth and clarity of this project comes as a complete shock, not because Owusu’s previous work wasn’t up to snuff, but because this tape is just miles ahead of anything shown before. Owusu conjures up a wide array of catchy hooks and ear-worm instrumentals without sacrificing any of the poignancy of his lyrics or message. The narrative of the album is structured around his relationship with the ‘black dog’ that hounds him from the very first track onwards. Winston Churchill famously coined this term ‘black dog’ as a metaphor for the severe depression that followed him all his life, and Owusu employs it to a similar degree. Despite his undeniable talents as a wordsmith, however, Churchill was also a total chump whose contributions to the global system of colonial oppression were single-handedly responsible
Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No Teeth | Reviews diymag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from diymag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Loud And Quiet
It’s early days yet, but
Smiling With No Teeth might be the best debut album of the year. The first full-length from Canberra’s Genesis Owusu,
Smiling… is a thrilling introduction.
Wildly ambitious in scope, there are moments where it snaps into industrial grooves worthy of Trent Reznor, and others where Owusu transforms into an Aussie D’Angelo. His collaboration with Kirin J Callinan, ‘Drown’, sounds like King Gizzard with Bruce Springsteen writing the hooks.
Across the record, the Ghanaian-born artist maintains the air of a bandleader, charismatically guiding listeners and musicians alike through fluid changes in style and genre. On some tracks he sings, on others he raps. Elsewhere, he delivers self-aware passages of spoken word, punctuating his verses on ‘Waitin On Ya’, for example, with gems like,