My first awareness of the psychedelic storm-tossed songstress Greentea Peng was through the medium of radio — thank you, BBC 6 Music. Her uncannily alluring song came at me out the speaker, and also quite out of left field, arising as something extraordinary: dark, compelling, and thunderously catchy. It had such authority and clarity it immediately got me thinking, who is this?
It also got me thinking, “Is she actually singing ‘Tardis’?” Having worked on Doctor Who, in another life, I’m sensitised towards this kind of thing. And yes, she is.
The song in question is Tardis (Hardest), the first single from the album Tell Dem It’s Sunny, featuring remorselessly shambling, intoxicating drumming by Jaega Mckenna-Gordon. In it, it also sounds like Greentea Peng is singing “There are no insecure monsters”. Interpretations of this line on the internet beg to differ (my only criticism of Tell Dem It’s Sunny is the lack of a lyric sheet) but if this interpretation is right, it’s not a great line but also very Doctor Who.
And she is definitely singing “From West Ham to Norwood.”
Because Greentea Peng is a London girl. From Bermondsey, in fact. Born Aria Wells, her performing name derives, in a story she must be fed up with telling, from a brand of her preferred beverage which she stumbled on in a shop in Peru. It was called Green Tea Seng and featured a beguiling bikini clad maiden cavorting on the box. Our heroine’s response was instant and witty, punningly transforming Seng into ‘Peng’. Which in contemporary urban slang means devastatingly dishy. But maybe you already knew that.
The Greentea Peng persona was coming together. Ariana Wells had always been pursuing music, performing and composing from childhood. Her early influences included Lily Allen (her first success came from singing Smile at an open mic gig in Mexico), Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill.
Personally I hear a lot of Tricky in her music. And parallels are often drawn with Amy Winehouse which I regarded as far-fetched until I heard Green on the new album, a track which is presided over by the spirit of Tricky and on which the Amy Winehouse comparison also makes sense. It features spare, spooky piano and percussion loop by Barry Gorey and cello by Laura McFadden.
Greentea Peng’s initial releases were EPs, Sensi in 2016 and Rising in 2019. Her first album proper, Man Made, was released in 2021— like Tell Dem It’s Sunny, it was a substantial musical statement, a double LP on vinyl. The cover art offers another piece of the puzzle, calling to mind Dr John the Night Tripper.
And there may well be a Dr John influence in the mix, even if there’s nothing directly New Orleans about Tell Dem It’s Sunny. We’re not being served a gumbo here but a voodoo bouillabaisse. As in My Neck, a trip-hop tour of nocturnal terrain with Declan Gaffney on supplementary drums and Greentea Peng on bass synth.
In a music scene necessarily dedicated to digital releases and streaming, it’s gratifying to report that Tell Dem It’s Sunny sounds terrific on vinyl whether or not, like her debut it’s been recorded “in 432 Hz frequency, a pitch that falls a semitone below music industry standard and is thought to vibrate healing energy.”
As you might have begun to realise, Greentea Peng approach is spiritual as well as mind-altering. Her Nowhere Man is not a Beatles cover. It’s a strutting, hallucinogenic invitation to join an inexorable march towards an apocalyptically heady party, with Declan Gaffney on stormy keyboards here, pulsing drums and percussion by Carl Benjamin and guitar by the leader herself.
One Foot is the second single from the album, with programming by Nat Powers and Jon Mills, and a vocal from Greentea Peng which is heartrending in its intensity (“Is it too late for me?”)
Create or Destroy 432 is marked out by swooping vocals from Greentea Peng who also plays bass, darkly dense keyboards from Max Robert Andrew Pearson and, especially, by Deon Graham’s echoing, extraterrestrial guitar.
Programmed by Earbuds, the hypnotic Glory is the de facto title track. With its refrain “It’s a sunny day” it is perfectly positioned to be a hit all through a long, hot summer. And I hope it is, because Greentea Peng is an artist of real stature.
Reviewed from vinyl
