ninehertz

I’m excited for this album as much as any other that has or will come out this year. Codex Serafini’s last record The Imprecation of Anima swept my feet from under me – I was looking forward to it, but never expected it to top my albums of the year in 2023.

Theirs is a joyous open market of wild, experimental and fun sounds, invited together in a festival of jazz and doom. But then there’s more, all manner of instruments and genres at play, to the point you’re a mile away from your comfort zone but so engrossed you hardly notice you’ve travelled.

And this is the thrill of Codex Serafini and their new album Mother, Give Your Children Sanity – you can enter looking for one thing but be consumed by the collective – my entry point was through their psychedelic colour and doom guitars, but a quote about them from a member of GNOD no less - “triumphant disco psych with '80s gothpop vocals” – describes them equally, just from another angle.

Pitying Them for Giving Life has me dancing; the saxophone and thick tone guitars whipping up a storm for the vocals that feel like a sermon, delivered by the prophets of psychedelia, whether they be Acid Mothers Temple, Sun Ra, Goat or Boris… it’s an absolutely wonderful amalgamation of the range of psych sounds, those alcoves where it can be found in jazz and doom and dance and indie and world music – mystical and exotic, all captured in three tempestuous minutes.

Seemingly every track starts with a jazz led rhythm to set the tone immediately, bolstered by funk or heavy psych guitar, saxophone or Eastern mysticism. Often all. The vocals holler with abandon throughout, a perfect narrative outburst to bolster the sense of shackles being broken and this freeness and elation to simply take over.

Their last album took me by surprise, but then that was always possible for a debut – this achievement feels even greater, having established expectations and still managing to surpass them. Mother, Give Your Children Sanity feels like a celebration of music, and we’re all invited.