Waking From Night Terrors

Primary Colours
The Horrors
XL, 2009
4 stars

The My Bloody Valentine influence may be popping up everywhere at the moment, but most wouldn’t have expected it to stretch to British garage ghouls The Horrors’ newie. Then again, the band’s entire image circa Strange House had more than a hint of clever, ‘of the moment’ pretension about it, so the thought of them following the late-noughties shoegaze bent is hardly a surprise. The thing is, because of their cleverly-constructed image, people didn’t see these guys as much more than fodder for an NME “saviors or British rock” covershot. It’s understandable - you see five blokes dressed up like the cast of The Corpse Bride and your opinion is pretty much locked-in before the CD is even in the player. Well, whatever your pre-conceived idea may be of these guys, forget it. If Primary Colours says one thing it’s that these guys are, first and foremost, a solid, well-educated band. Primary Colours sees the gruesome fivesome add a bunch of new sounds and ideas to their predominantly monochrome palette – think The Birthday Party’s dark punk mixed with Interpol’s more Joy Division-ish moments and Ride’s lush, washy walls of guitar noise. Strange, but it works beautifully. Faris Badwan’s newly-found singing voice is a revelation, and when Sea Within A Sea’s kraut beat and echoey guitars morph into a blissed-out synth loop it’s a drastic transition from the dark, abrasive shriek of Sheena Is A Parasite. Primary Colours is an exciting, thrilling turn for this band, and one that only serves to whet the appetite for whatever they come up with next.

Artwork: B
These guys (or their producers) have ticked all the shoegaze boxes with the design of this album. Out-of-focus photography (ala Loveless) - tick. Cheap and cheerful text treatment - tick. Thing is, with the cover image being predominantly dark (low light and no flash - always a recipe for blurry shots), it still has a bit of the gothy feel to it.

Published in mX, Thursday May 21, 2009.