“Our colour isn't red, it isn't blue, it’s black”, wrote The Horrors’ Tom Cowan upon discovering that his band’s song “I See You” had been included in a pre-show playlist at last month’s Labour party conference. It was an effective and economical riposte. A funny one too, especially if you’re familiar with the Schlocky Horror Hipster Show image that the band had when they emerged from Southend-on-Sea in 2006 (leather jackets and drainpipe jeans; sun-starved skin; Back From The Grave garage-punk, complete with cover of “Jack The Ripper”). A suspicious media suggested that they were over-privileged chancers – playing dumb, feigning darkness. And after witnessing their performance as opening act on the following year’s NME Tour, I was of a similar opinion: a headache-inducing half-hour of confused clattering and illuminous goo-green strobes (this actually makes it sound a damn sight more exciting than it was); thick frenzies of hair and smoke where the tunes should have been.
It took just eight minutes to change many minds. Coming across “Sea Within A Sea” on the radio was one of those wonderful “who is this?” moments: a motorik pulse (a good few years before every alternative band was adopting that Neu! beat and claiming to be influenced by Can), howls of reverb and stabs of wiry guitar which built into a dizzying electric storm; a spooked voice encouraging you to follow him “far beyond the shallows, far beyond the reaches of the shadows” towards “the scraping sky…my destination”. When it came to an end and the DJ revealed it as being the new Horrors track, “who is this?” turned into “that was them?”
Tom Cowan’s comment also recalls a description by 1960s freakbeaters The Creation – one of the finest English art-rock bands of their time – of their own sound: “our music is red – with purple flashes”. It refers to the concept of chromesthesia, in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Red seems apt for The Creation’s particularly incendiary brand of biff bang pow; the purple flashes perhaps the metallic screeds that guitarist Eddie Phillips used to elicit from his electric guitar using a bow. It’s safe to assume that a group of avid crate-diggers and psych-heads like The Horrors are familiar with The Creation, the quote and the concept.
Primary Colours, the band’s second album and home of “Sea Within A Sea”, was an extraordinary progression from the damp, dingy debut, Strange House. Geoff Barrow from Portishead was brought in on production duties and although he’s downplayed his role, saying that The Horrors knew actually what they wanted to achieve, his ear for fine detail and love of experimental rock is easy to detect in the record’s sound: thick coats of red, blue and yellow layered, swirled and smudged together to create a claustrophobic, breathlessly exhilarating mix of shoegaze, post-punk and psychedelia.
With Skying, the band moved from Primary Colours into Technicolor, their artful take on stadium rock drawing comparisons to The Chameleons, New Gold Dream-era Simple Minds and Psychedelic Furs. Frontman Faris Badwan claimed to have never heard any of those bands and that any similarity in sound was completely coincidental; either way, broadsheet critics, eighties rock fans and Shoreditch art students were all into it like a train.
In a recent interview, the band revealed that the intention for the latest album was to continue their “slow ascension into music that elevates”, adding a glistening electronic sheen, inspired by Giorgio Moroder and house-music labels Trax Records and Metroplex, to their already-airborne alt-rock. When the record was finished, and they were looking for a title that “expressed the sounds that live(d) within the sleeve”, one word felt right: Luminous.
Tonight’s packed show at the ABC kicks off confidently with two cuts from the new LP. The slow building, bongo-assisted intro and subsequent pay-off of “Chasing Shadows” makes it a tailor-made opener and “In And Out Of Sight”, while often overlooked in the reviews of Luminous that I've read, may be – along with “I See You” – my favourite on the album: the prominent yet fluid use of synthesizers on these tracks marking another progression for this forward-thinking band. A handful of tracks on Luminous (“Mine And Yours”, “First Day Of Spring”), while perfectly serviceable, feel like lesser versions of previous highs and, tellingly, don’t make tonight’s set-list.
We are rewarded for our appreciation and patience with two Horrors classics: “Who Can Say” – with its Ronettes-via-Ramones spoken word section – and a moody, magnificent “Sea Within A Sea”. Similarly, later on, mid-set newbies “Jealous Sun” and “Sleepwalk” are immediately followed by a catapulting “Endless Blue” and "Mirror's Image". Crisp, clean strobe tramlines complement the “Chase”-indebted “I See You”, while the terrific “Falling Star” is arguably The Horrors’ poppiest track yet - I can imagine someone like Grimes or Chvrches taking that gorgeous synth riff and running with it into the upper reaches of the Top 40.
In contrast to that fateful NME show, where he was throwing himself around, presumably in an attempt to mask the absence of tunes, Faris Badwan now lets the songs do the talking. His poise and cool is disrupted only by a smoke machine which is positioned directly behind him – at seemingly random intervals, unnecessarily powerful streams of smoke are fired out, engulfing the singer and threatening to force his slight, gangly frame off stage. As the smoke dies away, you half expect to find poor Faris hunched-over, wheezing and coughing.
Badwan's lyrics for The Horrors are rarely as personal or emotionally honest as his work with Cat’s Eyes (the closest he gets to vulnerable tonight is during the crooned verses of “Change Your Mind”): he’s too busy observing the skies and in awe of the vastness of the ocean to be pouring his heart out into a diary entry. But these songs clearly do connect with people. The fact that “I See You” was judged suitable for the Labour conference – alongside tracks by such black-hearts as Embrace, Gorgon City and Laura Mvula – shows just how much light and shade has seeped into The Horrors’ music over the years; it’s hard to imagine any of their early material being considered, let alone chosen, for such an event (though a “Sheena Is A Parasite”-backed speech on targeting benefit cheats would be genius). They produce a Big sound without resorting to the lazy “woah woah-woahs” and “yeah yeah yeahs” of many stadium acts. “Still Life” – while, yes, sounding a bit like Simple Minds – is expansive yet elegant, anthemic without being contrived.
Any other band would have saved “Sea Within A Sea” for last, but The Horrors also have “Moving Further Away”, another fantastic, propulsive eight-minute epic. Strobes shoot like caps of silver and the crowd wheels in formation.
The ABC felt like the perfect-sized venue for The Horrors tonight (large enough for the songs to swirl around and breathe; small enough for the experience to be an immersive one), but it would be no surprise to find them filling stadiums and headlining festivals in the near future. Their star is still on the rise.
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