Miami Is Hot, but Black Midi's Hellfire Is Hotter

They've been hailed as one of the last decade's most original, visionary rock bands. They rode a hype train to three critically lauded albums in a row and a Mercury Prize nomination. But besides all that, Black Midi might be indie rock's most prolific cover band.

"When we do classic songs," lead singer Geordie Greep says, "it will always sound a bit skewed. It will always be a slightly interesting version of that song. Whether it's a particularly good version is another story, but it will always be slightly interesting."

At any given Black Midi show, the band might spontaneously burst into a random cover, such as last year in Washington when, in the middle of the freaky Cavalcade album opener "John L," the band switched into "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira. A recent Australia tour featured AC/DC, naturally, but also the Chemical Brothers and, for some reason, the "Macarena." They also recorded a bunch of covers (Björk's "Bachelorette," Springsteen's "Born to Run," "Getting to Know You" from The Sound of Music) for a limited-edition, Japan-only CD, and they'll be doing an entire show of Beatles covers in November in the Netherlands.

Ahead of a show in Miami that Greep expects will be accompanied by "long nights dancing salsa, hitting up the beach, seeing all these pastel houses," the tour playlist has been filled with Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe — perhaps a salsa cover is not unheard of.

"Basically, in the band, we don't rehearse that much or come up with new songs that often, for loads of reasons," Greep says. "Doing covers sometimes is just easier. It's like the song's already written, it's there, we all know it's a good song, no one has to argue over whether or not it's a good song, you just do it, and that's that."

It seems like more artists than ever are covering each others' songs. The examples are endless, from Kelela covering Sade at a recent show to Lucy Dacus of Boygenius doing Carole King and Cher. Even J-pop legend Utada Hikaru pulled out her rendition of Bad Bunny's "Me Porto Bonito" earlier this year. What makes Black Midi a bit different in this respect is both the range and amount of covers — the band formed when they were attending a performing arts school in London, so learning someone else's song is pretty simple for them — as well as their own, let's say, unique sensibility.

"Superficially, it's very stupid," Greep says of the band's original material. "Most of the music sounds kind of ridiculous. None of the elements necessarily work together in a way that has been proven to work together before, necessarily. A lot of the songs follow funny stories about, you know, fictional warfare or horse racing or prostitution or the devil, contract killing — all this kind of stuff which is not necessarily the typical kind of fare for popular music songwriting."
The band's first few releases trended toward improvisational postpunk and math rock, mixing Gang of Four guitars with mixed-up time signatures. On Cavalcade and their latest Hellfire, they upped the ante in terms of musical ambition and sinister vision. Adding influence from free jazz and prog rock, the band's music has become brasher and darker, with Greep's vocals more operatic and wild as he spins tales of post-apocalyptic boxing matches ("Sugar/Tzu") and mutinous armies in the depths of hell ("Eat Men Eat").

Adapting these new complexities for a four-piece touring band can present challenges, but the band has embraced trying something different than what's on the record.

"[There] always has to be an emphasis more on energy and feel rather than the exact replication of the sonic elements that are on the album," Greep adds. "It's much better to see a show by a band where it doesn't sound very much like the album at all, but it does sound very good and very energetic and free."

Black Midi's most recent albums have featured plenty of wild characters and unhinged tales. A sense of theatricality is evident in ballads such as "The Defense," a tender love song about a brothel that feels like a big Broadway showstopper. Reviewers have made comparisons with Weimar theatre shows such as The Threepenny Opera, and indeed Greep does come off as something like a mad cabaret emcee, preaching to us above a screaming orchestra that's part King Crimson, part Pharaoh Sanders. The band takes an approach to storytelling that feels rare — both nonspecific and fantastic and yet also very personal and idiosyncratic.

"To create something out of nothing, I think, is very interesting. It's like, all you have is, you're trying to make a little world, a little scenario, a little circumstance that has a complete basis in nothing," Greep says. "Like all music, it's songs about our feelings and emotions, and the only thing it must strictly obey is the trajectories of your own heart."

Black Midi. With YHWH Nailgun. 8 p.m. Friday, June 23, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; gramps.com. Tickets cost $25 to $30 via eventbrite.com.