- In the handsome company of collaborators old and new, the New York duo reflects on the intricacies of the Black experience on their tremendously musical debut album.
- There's a certain warmth to restraining from profanity near someone you love. As a child in my nana's creaky railroad apartment on Troutman Street, if I heard a muffled crash I'd be sure of the words my nana would mutter in response: "Oh, sugar-honey-iced-tea." The debut album from native New Yorkers musclecars Sugar Honey Iced Tea! captures some of this homely warmth, one that is both quintessentially Black and New York City. Cars rush by like crashing ocean waves, heels clack unevenly on concrete and friends from around the city drop in to say hello. Pondering over the twinkling harp of "The African American Conundrum," Soul Connection's DJ Lovie opens the album with a confession: "I can never find the words to truly express how I'm feeling. When do I even have the time to?" It's a question many of us, under the crush of a looming recession, find ourselves wondering.
musclecars, the duo of Craig Handfield and Brandon Weems, have been working diligently in a corner of the New York scene that honours the percussive, jazzy side of house for over a decade. The liner notes of Sugar Honey Iced Tea! explain that the album was written to reflect the Black American experience: the "joy, to loss, intimacy, helplessness, perseverance and all the facets that lie in between." In a digital age when songs are shortened for equally short attention spans, the sounds on the record brazenly lounge over seven-minute tracks.
On the almost eight-minute stretch of "Ha Ya! (Eternal life)," the voice of Mozambique-born singer Natalie Greffel runs in rivulets, each utterance of the phrase as revelatory as the last. Organ house basks in a sun-filled room on "I Don't Remember The Last Time I Saw Stars," where a choir sings above cowbell, hand drums, piano and strings. musclecars take their time revealing all the different sounds in the room. A piano solo takes up much of the song, until sizzling guitar takes its place, grooving up and down the scale.
Since the duo released their first EP, Street Dreams in 2020, their goal has been to share the music that has been instrumental to them with their younger peers. When I interviewed Handfield and Weems two years ago, they explained that Sugar Honey Iced Tea! was influenced by stateside house legends like Maurice Fulton, Joe Claussell, Lil' Louis and Ron Trent. In cultivating this sound—with a gaggle of New York-based friends and contributors, such as kamaal, Lovie and Toribio—their debut album became an intimate family affair that bridges the old and new schools.
The cross-generational reach of Sugar Honey Iced Tea! comes across best on "Tonight." In August 2023, the track's vocalist kamaal performed the unedited track on a Bushwick rooftop as young attendees swayed gently in the night breeze to his catchy, humourous lyrics: "I'm just tryna dance / You just tryna fuck / I'm just tryna dance but you talking too much." On the album version, musclecars add keys that ring like brass bells, a swinging kick and sumptuous disco strings. New York house veteran Louie Vega has been one of the song's loyal advocates, playing different versions of the song to crowds of hundreds in his finest fedoras.
The life spilling from Sugar Honey Iced Tea! is more than the musicians' work. Gorgeous slices of dialogue show friends as guides and places of comfort, like one interlude that takes a voicemail from the late house DJ Carlos Sanchez, an important mentor for Handfield and Weems. "Thought we might have a little listening session but you know, it's okay," he says. "Might want to have a day of rest after working all weekend, I understand. Talk to you later." His words melt into the track's reflective piano notes like a dreamy memory. The album's world-building is enhanced by the work of Lovie, whose spoken word narrates all sorts of scenarios. In a skit preceding "Tonight," she plays the role of the brutally honest friend when her roommate insists that she's not trying to meet anyone at the club. "That's what you always say, then there's a new nigga in our fridge in the morning!" she responds, laughing. Elsewhere, Lovie deals more seriously with the question of legacy in "Ha Ya!"
The changing moodscape of Sugar Honey Iced Tea mirrors the multiplicity of the Black American experience. The one thing uniting us all is the certainty of death, and a hint of existential dread over the passage of time haunts the album. On "Every Party Must Come To An End"—which can be considered the hangover of "Tonight"—kamaal coos about a new love interest. Car horns blare, and in between incessant knocking, a man yells "Yo!" It's like a rude awakening the morning after you've gone home with someone, and the day groans on, even though it feels as if the two of you are simply extending your night in bed. "Running Out Of Time" opens with a screaming alarm, furiously manhandled hand drums and a triple kick that drops like a sheet of rain. But the latter half lets the light in with synths that glide in infinite directions and optimistic strings—it's a combination that might convince you that there is, in fact, always more time.
Tracklist01. The Afro-American Conundrum (Where does that leave us?)
02. Dream Boy
03. Tonight
04. Every Party Must Come To An End
05. Running Out Of Time
06. Carlos Sanchez Interlude
07. Hello?
08. Ha Ya! (Eternal Life)
09. I Don't Remember The Last Time I Saw Stars
10. Circles I (Prelude)
11. Circles II
12. There's Space For Us All
13. Water