Sometimes an album speaks to you, and you can think about it in terms of era, politics, a change of the guard, a draw of the cards. And sometimes an album just grabs you because it’s really fucking good. The Horrors’ new opus, Primary Colors could be slagged by the uninitiated as the work of a group of Cure copyists. Is it not, it is an album produced by a group of young Englishmen who grasp the future as passionately as they do the past. But the future is rarely grasped, it unfolds in a leisurely fashion, it tugs at your eyes and head like the arching, blurred streetlights on Mission Street that punctuate every unarriving bus and every thought lost on a Bay Area gust of air or abruptly found again in a seismic shudder.“Mirror’s Image,” track one on Primary Colors doesn’t let you indulge all that fog drenched paranoia and self indulgence, it lunges out at you the way you’d expect a product of the isles to do, it comes on like the intro to a mellow German minimal house track before it slowly, methodically and slyly grabs your head and fucks it into a distant, never imagined tomorrow, full of shreds of Bauhaus, Ride, The Cramps, The Doors, The Sonics, Neu!, and the Horrors. Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Normans, the earth cooling and people traveling over water and then you forget about all this in dark, loud rooms, filled with dark, loud people, their eyes and smiles and glances flooding into your delicate head
By track five, “New Ice Age” your battered and delighted psyche gets a chance to realize that is has just been pummeled by an excellence that rains down blow after blow. “New Ice Age” wheels around, grabs you by your collar and swings your drunken ass around the room and loses your dollars…holler! We could continue with this poetic tail chase, but let’s put it in simple terms (or not). This is a really good album by a group of artists who have grasped the music with gobsmacking clarity and who have so subtly and deftly cultivated a look and a style that they can subvert the intended effect of this image, turning it in on itself, and blowing your preconceptions out of the water, as you ponder all the other skinny white boys with accents and tight pants, who might look just a tad on the gothic side. Is it a way of saying, hate us, assholes, ‘cos of the way we look. We rock nonetheless? Who says you can’t be excellent and dress excellent? The Horrors beg to differ.
The group is used to adverse reactions as evidenced in their jaunt around the UK with the Arctic Monkeys last year, which produced what best could be called a mixed reception, with the Monkeys’ fans hurling a fair amount of projectiles at them. That’s a good sign though? Right? The Horrors’ sophomore piece is top music from a top band, obviously staffed by some smart, thoughtful types. Only thoughtful individuals would crash their Birthday Party and garage inclinations into uncharted stretches of kraut rock, electronics and lush, layered shoe gaze territory. More horror please.
The Horrors will be in the US in April and May, including appearances at Coachella, Webster Hall in NY and The Fillmore in San Francisco. Check ‘em.
Orr
2 comments:
Thank you !
No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!! No thank you bananaspam! No thank you Dance To The Radio!!!
Post a Comment