The Horrors
The Horrors
Luminous
(XL)
Listen again to the garage-goth novelty tunes, backed up by cartoonish costumes and Tim Burton imagery, of The Horrors' 2007 debut, Strange House, and you'll wonder how, seven years later, this quintet from Southend-on-Sea could possibly make one of the best, most rapturous, most intoxicatingly kaleidoscopic indie-rock albums of 2014.
To be fair, they pulled a U-turn on that early musical style with 2009's Primary Colours and refined it further on 2011's much-lauded Skying. But Luminous is the first album to completely encapsulate The Horrors' own style, with direct influences pushed into background textures and the box of past tricks left mostly unopened.
So what is that style? Well, at its core it remains psychedelic shoegaze married to a driving krautrock beat, with shimmering synths reinforcing the lighter approach of Faris Badwan's vocals these days. Sometimes it'll make the heart shudder to slowdive guitar chords (Jealous Sun, Mine And Yours); other times it'll sail close to pop music, with hands in the air rather than eyes on the ground (So Now You Know, Falling Star).
The sound is expansive, the attitude confident, the sensation often close to euphoric - particularly on seven-and-a-half-minute standout I See You, which annexes Morodor synths and heavy rock drums for an extended crescendo that's as thrilling as anything I've heard this year.
ALAN MORRISON
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article