The Horrors - Primary Colours
If anyone hasn’t been paying close enough attention, ‘landfill indie’ is the phrase being used to describe the current parlous state of boys-with-guitars. Following the modest success of The Libertines and the rarefied brilliance of Arctic Monkeys, the sheer volume of mediocre versions of each has caused British pop to implode on itself – think Pigeon Detectives, The View and the third Razorlight album, and you’ll get the idea.
If anyone deserved to be mainlined straight to the landfill, it was surely The Horrors. Plastered on the cover by a typically excitable NME before their debut single was even released, and with only a rudimentary idea of how to make music, they appeared to hope they could get by on their (admittedly pretty impressive) hair. With their first album consigned to the dumper almost as soon as it was out, you would have been forgiven for thinking you’d heard the last from the winklepicker-clad fops.
But in a reverse of the difficult second album syndrome, with expectations at rock bottom following a complete miss, they’ve come up with a really quite excellent second album. Getting Portishead’s Geoff Barrow into the producer’s chair has helped, and not just because the second half of closing track ‘Sea Within a Sea’ is a dead ringer for his own band’s ‘The Rip’. This is a fantastic sounding record, frequently coming on like it’s been made on slightly broken equipment – the synth notes all waver and wobble, but in a good way, not unlike Board’s of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children.
Happily the sense of the slightly ridiculous hasn’t entirely been dispensed with. This is a band that can channel My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division, but at the same time retain a sense of fun. The fantastic ‘Who Can Say’ breaks into a brilliantly barmy spoken-word interlude to the beat of ‘Be My Baby’ drums (which made me ask “Is this the most influential two seconds in popular music?”). Their poshness has been used as a stick with which to beat them in the past, but here it’s clear why it’s really a strength; after all, who would want such a bonkers moment delivered in anything other than the most sumptuous Essex vowels. Marvellous stuff, and all the better for being so unexpected.
Mini review
One of the year’s pleasant surprises, Primary Colours signalled the reinvention of NME fops The Horrors and should have won the Mercury Prize. Previously derided as little more than walking haircuts, the band actually learned to play their guitars this time around, and the results sound like a narcotic-fuelled punch-up between Kevin Shields, The Sonics and the Reid brothers. Faris Badwan’s mannered shriek is buried beneath a sea of pitch-black distortion, and there’s an attention to detail that points to the hands of co-producers Geoff Barrow and Chris Cunningham. Like most great rock records, the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a bombed-out corridor. Just try not to mention Peaches Geldof. (Paul Harrington)
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