Description
Serpentwithfeet – Soil – Vinyl Record
Soil, released on June 8, 2018, is the debut studio album by serpentwithfeet (Josiah Wise), and it stands as one of the most distinctive R&B releases of the late 2010s — a record that fuses gospel roots, experimental electronics, and operatic vocal performance into a lush, intimate exploration of love, vulnerability, and queerness. While serpentwithfeet had already made waves with his 2016 EP Blisters (produced with The Haxan Cloak), Soil marked his full arrival as a singular artist, unafraid to embrace theatricality, spiritual intensity, and emotional openness.
The title itself, Soil, carries layered symbolism. It evokes the earth as a source of nourishment and growth, but also as a site of decay and burial. Throughout the album, serpentwithfeet reflects on relationships as both sustaining and destructive, drawing on natural imagery — plants, roots, dirt, water — to describe the cycles of love and heartbreak. This imagery ties back to gospel and spiritual traditions, where earthly life and the divine are often entwined, but it is refracted through serpent’s unapologetically queer lens.
Musically, Soil blends avant-garde electronic textures, gospel cadences, and classical flourishes. His voice is the centerpiece: a classically trained baritone-tenor with a wide range, capable of soaring falsettos, operatic vibrato, and intimate whispers. It’s often layered into choral harmonies that recall church music, but the production — handled by Clams Casino, Katie Gately, mmph, and Paul Epworth — surrounds it with fractured beats, eerie synths, and atmospheric sound design. The result is music that feels ancient and futuristic at once, both sacred and sensual.
Songs like “Bless Ur Heart” and “Cherubim” showcase serpent’s talent for blending eroticism with reverence. “Cherubim” in particular is a standout: its pulsing rhythms and ecstatic delivery transform a song about romantic desire into something akin to a gospel hymn. “Wrong Tree” uses metaphorical language to describe unrequited love, while “Fragrant” plays with surreal imagery — “My man is so fragrant / If he were a star, he’d be the brightest of the bunch” — highlighting serpent’s ability to merge the cosmic and the domestic. The closing track, “Bless Ur Heart,” functions almost like a benediction, tenderly addressing a lover with gratitude, bringing the album’s spiritual and emotional threads full circle.
Lyrically, serpentwithfeet makes the personal boldly specific yet universally resonant. His lyrics openly celebrate queer love and intimacy without compromise, a rarity in mainstream R&B and gospel traditions. There’s a sense of reclamation in his work: taking the sound and language of the Black church, where queerness has often been marginalized, and turning it into a vessel for self-affirmation and erotic devotion.
Critics praised Soil for its originality and emotional power, often describing it as both challenging and rewarding. Some noted its melodrama and intensity, but these qualities are exactly what make it so memorable — serpentwithfeet leans into excess, showing that love, faith, and heartbreak are rarely tidy experiences. The album solidified his reputation as a visionary artist capable of reshaping R&B and experimental music into a space that is unapologetically personal, theatrical, and queer.
Soil feels like the opening chapter of a larger artistic journey. While serpent’s later albums (Deacon in 2021 and Grip in 2023) embraced warmer, more accessible sounds, Soil remains his most raw and uncompromising work — a record that captures the intensity of first love and heartbreak with operatic grandeur. It’s an album best absorbed as a whole, like a devotional ritual, where every track feels like part of a larger emotional liturgy.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Whisper
Messy
Wrong Tree
Fragrant
Mourning Song
Cherubim
Seedless
Invoice
Waft
Slow Syrup
Bless Ur Heart
