A trio made up of seasoned veterans within their respective musical fields, Nevermen is TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Adam “Doseone” Drucker (Anticon co-founder known for leading albums by cLOUDDEAD, Themselves, Subtle and 13 & God) and Faith No More/Mr. Bungle frontman and Ipecac Recordings co-founder Mike Patton. Extremely dense, with mostly electronic layers of who-knows-what and an unsurprising focus on wildly eclectic vocal trade-offs seemingly to an even amount in each song, Nevermen’s self-titled debut conjures up what Death Grips could have been capable of if more focus and time (as opposed to various proverbial middle fingers) were put into their albums.
Actually, tracks like “Treat ’Em Right,” “Tough Towns” and “Non Babylon”—as well as a particular rhythmic backbone discernible throughout the album—all bear a striking resemblance to underrated and sadly forgotten pioneers of ’90s underground hip-hop weirdness: the duo New Kingdom (especially the slower, more distorted and narcotizing atmospheres explored on that duo’s amazing final album, 1996’s Paradise Don’t Come Cheap) plus home-recording outlier Basehead, and specifically his second album, Not In Kansas Anymore. If any of these three guys dominate what ended up becoming Nevermen—and they don’t, really—it would be Doseone, as this thing overflows with spacey prettiness and his unique approach to the pop song.
However, at the end of the day, this is at once a singular sound that recalls nothing else out there and a genre-jumping exercise that actually works more often than not. This album really sounds like it was years in the making (as the bio info claims). With each player adding something to the stew when time on their own endeavors allowed, Nevermen is a successful and forward-thinking act of sonic maximalism.
—Andrew Earles
