Sydney Minsky Sargeant – Lunga (Domino) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sydney Minsky Sargeant, his debut solo album, Lunga, represents a sharp departure from the taut, electronic bite of his previous work as Working Men’s Club. Recorded over several years, it drifts between pastoral folk, ambient interludes, and occasional bursts of intensity. At its best, it offers a glimpse of Minsky Sargeant stripped back and vulnerable; but at times it feels like a series of snapshots that rarely settle into a fully satisfying whole.
The opener Intro is a minute of birdsong, scattered notes, and orchestral tuning. After this atmospheric reset, For Your Hand sets out on assertive acoustic strums and echoing vocals that bring to mind Nick Drake.
I Don’t Wanna initially charms with its folk textures before shifting into bubbling synths and pulsing drums, though the interplay between acoustic and electronic sometimes feels more tentative than seamless. Lisboa is tauter, Minsky Sargeant’s clipped delivery meshing well with its shimmering guitar lines, while Long Roads takes a more ambitious path: starting brightly, detouring through darker imagery, and ending on repeated mantras that verge on exhaustion. The combined impact of words, music, and delivery makes this one of the strongest tracks on the album.
Elsewhere, Summer Song highlights the album’s strengths and weaknesses. Its refrain “Maybe I won’t feel death’s in my stride” is poignant, yet the repetition across the lyrics risks blunting the emotional edge. Similarly, Chicken Wire surges with thunderous percussion and urgent vocals, but its drama can’t disguise the familiarity of its lyrical turns. Hazel Eyes slows the pace but laps is in stasis rather than developing, while the seven-minute interlude Lunga unsettles with restless synth flickers yet overstays its welcome.
The final stretch of A Million Flowers, How It Once Was, and New Day leans on strummed guitars and measured rhythms, and the cumulative effect drifts rather than defines. Phrases like “Times are changing” and “I don’t wanna be right” recur without the hypnotic energy they might carry in a Working Men’s Club track.
Written and recorded at different points in Minsky Sargeant‘s life, Lunga feels like a collage of images placed together without a unifying vision. There are moments of real intrigue: the layering of acoustic and electronic textures on I Don’t Wanna, the tension-building crescendo of Chicken Wire, the ghostly fragility of Summer Song. These hint at a search for a new sonic language, even if the results remain inconsistent.
Ultimately, Lunga is a brave experiment but a challenging listen. Less a definitive statement than an intriguing sidestep — brave, exploratory, but not fully convincing.
John Bradbury
Lunga will be released September 12th on Domino Records
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