Soho Jackal & The Exceptional Mr Hyde — “London Sky, Charcoal Grey” | Album Review

A dark, cinematic album about city isolation, routine, social division and the people living inside the darkness.

6 min read

London Sky, Charcoal Grey

Soho Jackal & The Exceptional Mr Hyde

London Sky, Charcoal Grey is not a conventional album. It moves between spoken word, post-punk, dark electronics and cinematic atmosphere, but its real strength is that those pieces serve one emotional world where city life can make a person feel surrounded and alone at the same time.

The title track begins there. It was inspired by Soho Jackal leaving northern England for London in the 1980s to find work, with Philip Montgomery writing the lyric from a male perspective. Rain at the window, the pressure of work, routine, depression and the effort of simply getting through the day all become part of its grey London landscape. It is part song and part narration, moving through the grey spaces of work, routine and isolation.

I spent time living in Toronto, Canada, another large city where it was possible to be among thousands of people and still feel isolated. There were familiar places and smaller groups where I felt connected, but much of the city could feel anonymous. The album is not trying to tell my story, and Toronto is not London, but I recognize that feeling in these songs, the way repeated exposure to hardship around you can become part of the scenery unless you make yourself look again.

That is the thread running through the record. Urban decay, political frustration, depression, social division, memory, storms and brief moments of beauty all appear, but the album does not settle into one mood. The darkness of the title track leads naturally into the versions of Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” and Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker.” They were chosen because they fit that progression and the project’s outlook, not simply as familiar cover choices.

The collaboration deserves to be explained clearly. The release is billed as Soho Jackal featuring The Exceptional Mr Hyde, largely for label and distribution reasons, but Philip confirms it is a joint effort. Soho Jackal provides the concepts and ideas, co-writes the music, contributes production input, backing vocals and video input. Philip Montgomery, working through The Exceptional Mr Hyde, develops those concepts, co-writes the music, writes virtually all of the lyrics, sings the lead vocals, mixes and produces the album, and handles the video work with Soho’s input. Soho remains deliberately low-key, but her presence shapes the record’s identity.

That identity is why London Sky, Charcoal Grey works. It is different from a typical Exceptional Mr Hyde release, but it holds together as a complete album rather than a collection of experiments. I see that the album refuses to treat these subjects as background noise. It keeps bringing the listener back to the people living inside the darkness.

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