Nairobi tag themselves as ‘Afrobeat’ on the BandCamp page for their new track, ‘Brothers Arms’. That’s a term that often seems misappropriated. Despite my knowledge of Afrobeat (and African music in general) being limited to the odd Andy Kershaw radio show, brief listens to random Afrobeat compilations on Spotify and, um, Paul Simon’s Graceland, I think I’ve grasped enough to realise that the musical term seems best to describe an overall lightness and joyousness, with clean and crisp guitar lines ringing through skittering, circular rhythms. Unfortunately ‘Afrobeat’ seems now weighed down with some kind of neo-post-rock stylistic baggage, and it’s often a term bandied around when discussing bands that are too knowing and studied, or that happen to have anything that falls outside a regular 4/4 drum pattern.
Nairobi seem to fit this term, however, and ‘Brothers Arms’ seems to suggest that they have developed a sound that was previously post-post-Foals GCSE-math-rock, and is now becoming genuinely celebratory, happy-sounding music that is light, fresh and infectious. Clocking in at just over three minutes, it’s based around a lovely guitar melody, backed up with some kind of glockenspiel, built amongst a simple-sounding-yet-complex rhythm section, with the whole thing attaining a kind of hovering weightlessness. The vocals are strange – a Robert Smith-in-training voice that seems to strain at simple notes – but they add a uniquely recognisable touch to the band.
Nice stuff.