This isn’t Josiah Wise’s coming out album. Almost everything the American with stunning Christian-choir vocals has recorded as Serpentwithfeet is stamped with the desire lines of queer love. Yet Grip is far more lascivious and uninhibited than 2021’s love-fuddled Deacon, with a glossy, clubby feel that’s bounds away from the unearthly, recherché goth-gospel pioneered on his debut, Soil. The extroversion is because Grip soundtracks Heart of Brick, Wise’s 2023 theatre production depicting black gay nightclubs – the lands where he bloomed, no longer a seed buried in the long shadow of the church.
However, Wise’s exultant, say-anything honesty (“Choke me now, fuck me now/ Upload that dick into the cloud!”) is sometimes dulled by generic songwriting and overused Auto-Tune. The features don’t bring much to the party either, bar texture against Wise’s bejewelled, supernatural keening. Ty Dolla $ign’s everyday sexism is tedious, while Mick Jenkins’s awkward flow hobbles the promising Black Air Force. Nothing is as indelible or unhinged as Wise’s alt-R&B classics Four Ethers and Cherubim, although both guitar-driven Spades and Safe Word are brilliant here. Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.
