The Horrors - Primary Colours (XL)
4/5
By: Dan Monsell
When the Horrors first appeared, swaggeringly gothed-up and at the cutting edge of trashy chic and high fashion alike, seemingly evidently public-schooled; slumming it for a laugh in a Whitechapel council estate as they ran amok around the capital resplendent in the heyday of the indie disco, nothing was easier than to write them off as fashionista chancers with as much as real grit as smooth wooden floor.
The hype machine at the time was struggling to cope with the dramatic slowdown of the great white hopes brought from Manhattan. Hope was lost - Pete Doherty was being sent to Buddhist camps in Thailand to deal with his addiction. The world was mad as hatters! The Strokes and Killers were no longer on our pages, instead we had The Horrors and the Klaxons to pin our hopes on. This scribe witnessed some of their early shows in the same night (oh how the glory of my clubbing days is gone) some many moons ago.
With them came something supposedly new to be excited by; a "nu"-something, guaranteed to sell mags etc. in the hope that a new movement would come about. On the one hand, a Klaxons-lead supposed new genre "nu-rave", on the other, a towering frontman in the shape of Faris Badwan and his black-clad cohorts, attacking fans, playing 20 mins sets; a gaggle of individuals prepared to dress to an almost ludicrous degree to impress and in total, seemingly so very easily ready for showbiz and gossip friendly copy-selling fare. 'Nu-goth'?
Neither had really even the beginnings of a song of their own to justify the hype between them, and the Horrors even less so. Predictably their first release did nothing to really change such an impression, and neither did its sales. The band were not dead and buried though. In fact far from it, instead just as before, the band's actual music continued to be out-shone by its attitude, its fashion, its message. In the wake of their existence, the East of London has only become more and more full of black-laced covered new wave Victorian Goths. Club nights have been set-up, and a Horror is so frequently either spotted as present, or even more likely, topping the bill of DJs. An expansion is clear.
Musically, what has lazily been classed as nu-goth by certain magazines actually features a whole host of different types of band, unified by a style and type of coolness not seen for some years in young bands before the Horrors appeared. The likes of O.Children, An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump, Kasms and others greatly outshine The Horrors early music, and apart from similar attitudes, musically are on different pages. Their messy 60s garage punk is different to the Joy Division-esque space of O.Children, or the arty 80s hardcore of Kasms.
In the years following the release of the Horrors' debut the question was to hang heavy over whether they were to remain trend-setting caricatures of sorts, doomed to be spotted with a Geldof under one arm and at the back of gigs in East London haunts, or to actually put into practice what some of their DJ sets or club nights demonstrated - that they were actually very dedicated and knowledgeable music fans, and, that they not only did they know how to play live, that they had it in them actually write some music, and to make an album to justify their attention.
The good news for us, and for them of course, is that with the second release the road to Damascus has begun to be cleared for some of their naysayers of old. Unlike the messy garage-punk-update of The Sonics of Strange House, Primary Colours showcases a band more realized as a prospect; now at grips with the way to make the weird sounds on the obscure vinyl clutched under their arms. The selection of Portishead's Geoff Barrow and Chris Cunningham at the production controls has proved to be a master-move. From the fuzzed-up bass and reverb drenched drums on one of the album's standouts 'Who Can Say' to the soaring synths and waves and mountain-tops of Kevin Shields-style guitars throughout, this is the way to make this stuff sound. At the end of 'Sea Within a Sea', Barrow's even kind enough to let them have a keyboard riff off of Portishead's recent masterpiece Third. How kind.
Much has correctly been made of the album's new direction, swapping their 60s heroes for more of an eighties reference, with the likes of Jesus and The Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine now major points for departure. Through expanding their horizons and letting their musical heroes feed so heavily into their music so directly The Horrors have learned to write some great songs, and to actually fill out the longer meandering tracks, rather than just spook people out with their sped-up psych-rock and dark eye-make up. In short, their now artful indie-rock approach (and at times it actually verges quite close to stadium-type indie rock n roll you know, of the type Primal Scream would be more than happy with) suits them well. Not only is it very clever, musically (and dare we say commercially), it shows they're a band able to evolve, relatively naturally and un-predictably, giving fans and critics alike a reason to appreciate this body of work, and even actually look forward to the next one.
This is by no means a perfect album - at times it's almost parodic how they manage to spit those out who have come before them. An actual My Bloody Valentine guitar-part here, a Joy Division bass-line there, drum parts exactly the same as Tortoise/My Bloody Valentine. 'I Only Think of You' just is Interpol's 'NY', and 'I Can't Control Myself' is Spiritualized. The Horrors are victims of their large record collections in this case, but their saving grace is that they pull it together well, and it's sometimes hard to ask for more in an age when kids are more aware of the music before them than ever before.
Wherever they got their education, these chaps are very smart. Sitting out and letting the world galvanise their original influence, they've allowed themselves time to write a record that's put them on the way to being a band that matters, and return as dark princes of the night. This is not just an album that will not only help to progress the dark corners of East London, it's a signal of an intent to break out and fill stadiums one day. Heavens knows what they'll do next.
Artists in this article: The Horrors
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