Young Fathers have already enjoyed many peaks throughout their 15-year career; from winning a Mercury Prize for their debut album Dead (they reached number four on our Hot 100 that year) to being the only band to win the SAY Award twice when they were victorious with Cocoa Sugar in 2018. But despite all of those accolades, 2023 could easily be considered the Edinburgh trio’s most seismic year yet. The release of their fourth studio album Heavy Heavy in February landed them multiple covers (ours included), and a flurry of four and five-star reviews from titles spanning the NME, Financial Times, The Scotsman and, unsurprisingly, The List. For the first time in their career, they entered the top ten UK album charts and reached number two in Scotland while bowling critics over with their rousing live shows. All in all, it was a comeback of epic proportions. But what does one third of the band, Kayus Bankole, make of it now he’s had some time to reflect?

‘It feels like an eternity ago, to be honest,’ he says with a long exhale, a few days after completing a UK tour which culminated in two sold-out shows at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. ‘I think it’s because of the time it took to make the record. This is the longest that we’ve spent recording, actually trying to finesse everything in terms of the final mixes, the order and post-production stuff as well.’

Made entirely by the band’s three members, this album marks the first release without Timothy London on co-production duties. ‘There wasn't another body to kind of give us perspective. So we had to trust our instincts and trust each other again.’ Produced throughout lockdowns in Leith’s Out Of The Blue studios, Heavy Heavy is, in part, a product of and reaction to human isolation. Its rallying cries and anthemic hooks carry both frustration toward a failing government and communal catharsis. ‘In a world where there’s a huge emphasis on individualism, we wanted to counteract that with a sense of togetherness,’ he insists. ‘That was the catalyst for creating the live show. That extended to the amount of bodies we have on stage with us: two backing singers, having Callum Easter join us, and our drummer Steven being part of the mix. The artwork, which came after the record was done, was trying to represent the fire that’s burning, the eternal dread but mixed with joy at the same time.’

The result earned Young Fathers another Mercury Prize nomination and a record-breaking third Scottish Album Of The Year Award win, not to mention invitations to play at Glastonbury and go on tour across the US with Depeche Mode. However, as Bankole explains, rave reviews and accolades don’t carry too much weight in the eyes of the band. ‘Just putting the record out would have been a success in itself to us; that we finished it after such a long hiatus. The guys were saying this album was another arm that we’ve grown, but to me it’s more than an arm, more than a limb. It’s like wings, and it displays the wonderful weirdness that we possess.’

That ‘wonderful weirdness’ is what contributes to Young Fathers’ singular sound; the special quality that makes their music immune to neat genre tags or comparisons. ‘In our previous records, we’ve had to label it and say “file under rock and pop”. With this record we’ve just given in, to going, “if we can’t define it and you can’t define it, let’s not define it”. Let audiences define it a little bit more and see how that goes.’ 

Discover who else made the cut in the The List Hot 100 on our site or in our latest issue, available at all good stockists across Glasgow and Edinburgh.