THE HORRORS – Skying (Part 3)

The Horrors‘ Skying is their best album to date, gimmick or no, says Brandon. He’s also wasted, so take that with a grain of salt. Furthermore, he’d like you to know that this is not a dance album. Well, it is and it isn’t. (This section is also being written by Brandon, who remains in a state of inebriation, btw.)

From: Brandon Hall
To: Megan Bowers

All right, Megan. Imma give it to you straight. I’m pretty drunk right now. I know it’s not cool, nor professional, but I had a friend in town tonight and he’s leaving tomorrow and I know we gotta have this shit wrapped up by sometime Friday, so fuck it. I’m gonna write my response at 1:40 in the morning. And it’s going to have typos and it probably won’t be coherent.

But hell, maybe we can just look at it as one of the fun quirks inherent to AudioVole. Besides, a lot of people only ingest music in a state of inebriation, and considering we’ve mentioned The Haçienda in 100% of our posts so far, maybe we should have been doing this whole dialectic slightly fucked up from the start.

I feel like your biggest point was “the gimmick” and I feel like I can’t adequately speak to that right now. For the most part, I guess I think everyone needs to find something. Pop music is pop music. The structures don’t vary much, the chords and time signatures are typically pretty similar. Everyone is aping The Beatles in some fashion. So you gotta have something. I didn’t really like Strange House, and hadn’t heard Primary Colours until you sent it to me. And you’re right, Primary Colours is a huge step forward for them. Skying, for that matter, only continues that momentum. It’s my favorite of their three albums. So if it took a gimmick for them to get on the cover of NME before they even released an EP, then that’s awesome, because it seems like there’s a very good chance no one would have heard of them otherwise, and they might not have had an adequate opportunity to make one album, let alone three. All hail gimmicks if it benefits good bands that deserve attention.

But then, isn’t it so sad that genuinely good bands need gimmicks, when there seem to be so many absolutely shitty bands populating the radios?

I also want to speak to a point that I think I started, which is to say that this album is a “dance album,” or, at least, that this band should be performing in front of dancers. I don’t think that’s entirely true. I mean, I want to liken them a little to The Smiths or My Bloody Valentine in that, “Yes. You  can dance to these, but you have to be prepared to dance to The Smiths or My Bloody Valentine, and it’ll probably help to be familiar with the songs.” You’re a pretty great DJ and I have no doubt that you’d be able to mix in any of those songs you mentioned in the midst of a raver, but would you just put the album on start to finish and declare to your minions, “DANCE!”? I can’t imagine you would.

Because I actually think The Horrors are at their best when they’re playing the atmospheric minstrels as opposed to the dance floor dictators. The lushness of first single, “Still Life,” is hard to ignore. It builds and twists and moans beneath reverbed-out guitars and horns, as does following track, “Wild Eyed.” “Endless Blue” is one of my favorite songs on the album primarily because of how it opens with such a loose, jazzy trot, only to be blasted away by some serious pop-RAWK. And “Moving Further Away” and “Oceans Burning,” specifically for their hypnotic growth and subsequent eruptions create two of the most solid and, yet, experimental tracks on the album. And these tracks are, I think, the foundation for what The Horrors are now, and what I expect them to be years from now.

Megan, I don’t think this is a band, gimmick or no, that is going away any time soon. In fact, three albums in, they’re already three times as consistent as Interpol. I could easily see them releasing solid album after solid album for years to come, as long as they stay together. And frontman, Faris Badwin, seems self-effacing and sincere enough that it’s hard to foresee this band falling apart anytime soon.

Also, can we talk about the horns? I have nothing to say about them except that I love them. I love the horns. More horns, please.

“When you wake up, you will find me.” Be scared,

Brandon

Stream the full album here!