Locally-informed and globally based – spread between London, Atlanta and New York – Algiers refuse to sit idly by while most contemporary artists appear perfectly content to wait out the revolution. Not only do they harbor a purposeful sense of obligation in what they do on their latest resistance record, The Underside Of Power, but they recognize the roots and thorns of precedent in said resistance. 

Signed to Matador, they released their second album “The Underside of Power” in 2017. Also their song Blood can be heard in the True Detective season 3 soundtrack.

Their shared experiences and collective understanding of this rising tide of sinister politics, growing up together in Atlanta and witnessing first-hand the pervasiveness of racialized and institutional violence, compels them to make music together, to combat the potentially crippling waves of frustration and despair and to let out a soulful roar, a call-to-action set to an eclectic, positively electric beat.

Fortunately, the multiracial quartet Algiers provides more than mere distraction, but rather a revelatory creative release and wholesale rejection of the globally normative corporate playlist culture. Poke at the feverish surface, and out come wafting touchpoints as disparate and intriguing as Big Black, Wendy Carlos, John Carpenter, Cybotron, The Four Tops, Portishead, Public Image Limited, Steve Reich, and Nina Simone. Deep echoes of Black Lives Matter and its 20th century forbears gather, surge, and subside in their often soulful work, a form of principled, acute dissent more interested in learning from the past than in evoking nostalgia. 

Existing in a perpetual state of diaspora, as a multinational musical cabal with no more than two members living in the same city simultaneously, the members’ virtual homelessness exposes them, collectively and individually, to the codified injustices of creeping fascism, the compounding plain-sight provocations of Britain’s xenophobia and Trump’s America.  “Brexit and the US election taking place at the beginning and towards the end of the process definitely shaped it for better or for worse,” says guitarist Lee Tesche.

And while many artists seem uninterested or even afraid to fully engage with these potent topics in song, Algiers has zero qualms about taking a direct approach. “When we were growing up in the South, these critiques of class and race oppression were largely and sometimes violently suppressed,” says bassist Ryan Mahan. “It’s why we take inspiration from the Panthers or the Chicano movement, to name two.” 

Furthermore, the lack of a singular geographic base of operations only seems to creatively embolden Algiers, who’ve adapted in brave new ways musically. “Being separate and still wanting to write forced us to really get to grips with modern technology, to bend it to our will,” says Mahan. That doesn’t mean geography is not important to Algiers. As the band’s very name more than implies, they are inspired by the Algerian city at the center of a struggle to overthrow its occupiers, a symbol of dignity and resistance to oppressed people everywhere. 

Adding to this Casbah rocking mix of ideas is the relatively recent inclusion of drummer Matt Tong, formerly of Bloc Party. Joining the group for the touring cycle following their prior album, 2015’s acclaimed eponymous debut, he’d spent time gelling with the original trio as a core component of their simply ferocious live sets to understand and help shape the dynamic. “I was very conscious of being the new guy, working out how to augment the emerging compositions without distracting from them,” he says. For a band that seems to revel and thrive in flux, Tong’s substantial role in the making of The Underside Of Power worked out well. “For me, what it is to work as a musician has changed drastically since I first started out and Algiers has shown me that there is still so much to master.”

Some of this is informed by their choice of collaborators. Recorded largely in Bristol and spiritedly produced by Adrian Utley of Portishead (who also lent his extensive synth collection to the proceedings), with further contributions from a crew that includes Ben Greenberg [Uniform, The Men] and Randall Dunn [Sunn 0)))], pick any track off The Underside of Power and the reference points expand exponentially, a dizzying and thrilling Recommended-If-You-Like list that would consume a series of afternoons. 

The dangerously poppy title track finds a glorious midpoint between Suicide and The Temptations, making for the catchiest expression of outrage this side of the ‘70s. A molotov cocktail of a single, that particular song represents a potential paradox for Algiers, the maintaining of a renegade righteousness in the midst of a peppy soul tune. The band doesn’t concern themselves too much with that risk, however. “No matter what your messaging is, you can’t control what people will or won’t take away from it,” says Mahan. “The only thing you can do is put stuff of substance out there.”