King Garbage

★★★★ Heavy Metal Greasy Love IPECAC. CD/DL/LP

Eccentric soul contortions from moonlighting R&B production whizzes. Grammywinning producer/songwriters whose clientele include The Weeknd, Sia and Leon Bridges, Zach Cooper and Vic Dimotsis’s work as King Garbage takes a more maverick path. Their second album, Heavy

Metal Greasy Love, eschews the exacting, ersatz approach of soul revivalists like the Daptones for something lo-fi and visionary, and using the studio as a tool for unlikely alchemy.

Each track crackles with ludic inspiration, from the seamy, distorted brass scoring Let ’Em Talk, to the itchy rhythms, bristling woodwind and manhandled pianos of Snow, to Never Die, a stark showcase for Cooper’s eloquent octave guitar. Meanwhile, Dimotsis’s vocals – multi-tracked, wilfully layered and purposefully miked too close and too hot – evoke D’Angelo, Daryl Hall and Tom Waits, occasionally on the same track. Twisting the familiar into the idiosyncratic, King Garbage’s mutant strains of deep soul and murky funk are an unexpected treat. Stevie Chick