The Horrors- Primary Colours

I would like to include more music on this blog...I have been opposed to for some time as I feel I don't really know much about music anymore, I'm really out of touch and have been sticking to what I know. Everyone has an opinion though.

And my first subjects shall be:

The Horrors

When the first album was released I decided I did not like The Horrors without even listening to them. They seemed to be style over substance, good style granted, but the slick jeans and bowl cuts generated a quiet loathing. I thought it strange that they were so popular when they were just London kids whom I often saw walking down a road, standing in a club, dancing in high waisted trousers underground...generally just people. Yet on the internet there was a furious crazy following?

Then I listened to the album and found I rather liked it. Nothing ground breaking, no outstanding musicianship, but it did do something a little differently. The sound was distinctly retro if raw, and I love excessive us of a synth. I put this on my iPod sometimes secretly and enjoyed it. I have just listened to the second album Primary Colours (yes ten decades after everyone else) and am impressed. This new record has lost the hyperbolic darkness of the first and emerges as something softer and more grown up. Gone are the irritating lyrics about finding a baby's glove and keeping it in a bag (?!), gone are the throat curdling whoops... we have something polished juxtaposed against more primal production, and it works.

The album starts with a wash of sound that is such a contrast to the first album that I was cursing that I had accidentally got the wrong thing! It builds with a more Horrors-eque bell tolling into some catchy riffs. Faris's voice is more drawling, more actual singing albeit with a minimal range of oh say two or three tones. It's definitely an album that works on creating 'sound' mixing the individual to create a conglomeration where it all pools? Hard to describe as all music is essentially sound. 'Sound' in a different sense of the word (great music journalism).

Favourite Song

New Ice Age - I love a good chromatic sequence and 'build up'. Lovely minor chord progression (sure I recognise it actually though can't say from where) and a catchy melody that speeds up towards the end and gets 'angry'. I am easily pleased.

Bravo The Horrors. And of course they are oh so stylish.