The Little Ones - Morning Tide (Heavenly)
4/5
By: Mike Harounoff
The world can be shit. Put on any news channel and there's rarely anything positive, anything to look forward to, unless the apocalypse is one of your Christmas wants. So it's not particularly startling that in a world now full of harsh realism about how precisely gritty and shit everything is, happiness, as a concept, is largely lost. The Little Ones however are here to save us. They've pulled out their maps and found happiness. And they deliver it through music.
Morning Tide is one for warm summer nights where everything just seems to feel perfect, where you can lay on the grass and completely escape. That escape is likely to take you back to 1960's California - songs like 'Everybody's Up To Something' transport one to a beach party where the booze is flowing and everybody is singing at the top of their voices. It's complimented brilliantly by title track 'Morning Tide' which is like waking up next to somebody after that same beach party, looking out to the sea and just knowing that yeah, everything is pretty cool right now.
Part of The Little Ones' art is their consistency, their ability to keep the positive vibe going. Never do they really feel the need to slip in some false melancholy, but this doesn't leave the album feeling in any way too samey either. Morning Tide is designed to be a feel good record, the band's policy being that if the songs didn't make them dance they wouldn't feature. If suddenly they tried to get a bit too serious, the purpose of this album would become wayward. Its perfection is in its clarity, it's clear knowledge of what its listener wants.
Take Morning Tide out of the summer context and play it on a winter night. Go on. It's so powerful you'll almost be able to feel the summer breeze running across your face. It's something largely made possible by James Ford's (he's produced Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets, Klaxons... and he's also the fella in Simian Mobile Disco) ability to make an excellent album sound like it should sound. 'Tangerine Visions' and past single 'Ordinary Song' exemplify these production skills and should come with a free bottle of sunscreen just to use whilst listening to these tunes.
What The Little Ones have created with their debut full length proper is something timeless, but in a very personal way. Yeah, when you turn on the news everything seems shit. But stick Morning Tide on behind it, and it feels like every little thing's gonna be alright.
Artists in this article: The Little Ones
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