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Album Reviews
Album Review: The Horrors – Primary Colours (Beggars/XL)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 4 May 2009
The Horrors, a band perhaps better known for their hair than their music, return with sophomore release ‘Primary Colours’, a graceful migration from the more commercially-geared, sadly dismissed, but nevertheless brilliant ‘Strange House’. Slick yet preserving a scuzzy, fuzzy outline, the new album reeks of growth and progression, and is truly the work of a group of individuals who know their influences clearly: it scopes from the eerie gentleness of The Cocteau Twins to the innovative, dynamically dark sounds made famous by the likes of The Velvet Underground over four decades ago. ‘Sea Within A Sea’, the first single from the album, is, like most of the songs on ‘Primary Colours’, more focussed on instrumentation than frontman Faris’ vocals, which have been toned down considerably since the band’s last release. Echoing and rich, it offers a range of peculiar sounds, not unlike the darkly dazzling ‘New Ice Age’ with its slow build up of jarring, resonating guitar hooks and an oddly hypnotic set of verses. But it’s the ethereal, hazy melody of ‘Do You Remember’ that steals the show – and what a creepshow it is. To those who have dismissed them in the past: The Horrors are bloody amazing. Already hailed as a contender for album of the year, ‘Primary Colours’ is a testament to what this band have to offer underneath pure image – talent and downright know-how. TW
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