''Dark Days + Canapés'' is the fourth album by British vocalist and musician

Ghostpoet Obaro Ejimiwe (born 18 January 1983) is a British singer, songwriter and musician better known by his stage name Ghostpoet. His first album, ''Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam'', was shortlisted for the 2011 Mercury Prize. His 2015 album ''S ...

. Described as a standout track, the first single from the album, "Immigrant Boogie", was released in April 2017. Three more songs, "Trouble + Me", "Freakshow" and "Dopamine If I Do", were also released prior to the album. Music videos were released for "Immigrant Boogie" and "Freakshow". It was produced by Leo Abrahams and mixed by Abrahams and

Kristofer Harris Kristofer Harris is an English record producer, mixer and writer. He is most noted for his work with Belle and Sebastian, Ghostpoet, Smoke Fairies, Clock Opera and Bear's Den (band), Bear's Den. Biography Kristofer Harris grew up in Kent, Unit ...

. "Woe Is Meee" was the second collaboration of Ghostpoet and

Daddy G Grantley Evan Marshall (born 18 December 1959), also known by the stage name Daddy G, is a British DJ and a founding member of the band Massive Attack. Biography Born in Bristol to West Indian parents, Marshall joined the Bristol music scen ...

. In an email to ''

The Fader ''The Fader'' (stylized as ''FADER'') is a magazine based in New York City that was launched in 1999 by Rob Stone and Jon Cohen. The magazine covers music, style and culture. It was the first print publication to be released on iTunes. It is o ...

'', Ghostpoet said "I wrote this one for the struggling minds, trying to make sense of an ever-increasingly technologically connected, but lonesome world."

Reception

Commercial performance

In the UK Albums Chart charting week of August 31, 2017, ''Dark Days + Canapés'' was the No. 37 album upon its first week of release according to the

Official Charts Company The Official Charts (legal name: The Official UK Charts Company Limited) is a British inter-professional organization that compiles various "official" record charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. In the United Kingdom, its charts inc ...

. It marks the highest position achieved by a Ghostpoet album as well as the first time that one of his albums had ranked within the top 40 based on domestic sales.

Critical reception

''Dark Days + Canapés'' was well received upon released by contemporary

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

. The review aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gave the album a weighted score of 79 out of 100, indicating "generally favourable" reviews. Harriet Gibsone in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' gave the album 3 out of 5 stars, stating that it was "exhaustingly bleak" and compared "Trouble + Me" to

Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...

's " Street Spirit". Isa Jaward of ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, concluding Ghostpoet was "now at home in this lt-rockstyle and his languid, sung-spoken monologues sound their most assured." Reviewing the album for ''The Line of Best Fit'', Joe Goggins concluded that "Ejimiwe is on positively caustic form at points, not least when he rails against modern relationships and consumerism on “Freakshow” and frets about self-medication on closer “End Times”. His languid delivery belies the very real anxieties that Dark Days + Canapés is scored through with, but the nervy sonic backing absolutely serves to accentuate them; what that leaves us with is an album that's more about personal politics than global ones, but that still feels scored through with the suffocating disquiet of life in 2017. In '' Clash'', critic Robin Murray described the album as "boasting a rare sense of unity" with "the aural palette bringing together hugely disparate elements to conjure something of real impact."

Andy Gill Andrew James Dalrymple Gill (1 January 1956 – 1 February 2020) was a British musician and record producer. He was the lead guitarist for the rock band Gang of Four, which he co-founded in 1976. Gill was known for his angular, jagged style of gu ...

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

reviewed the album with a 5 out of 5 rating, describing it as a "great album that bodes well for Ghostpoet's future." In the review from

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, Andy Kellman was also positive in his assessment, stating "Rest assured, everything else on the two-time Mercury Prize nominee's fourth Ghostpoet album throbs and churns with grim, gripping realism. Parts of Dark Days + Canapés are so bleak in spirit that they sound as if they were recorded in a sweatbox built inside a slag heap."

Track listing

Charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dark Days + Canapés 2017 albums Ghostpoet albums Albums produced by Leo Abrahams PIAS Recordings albums