The Horrors - Primary Colours

Author

Anetta Nevin

Published

Thursday 2nd July

In ‘Primary colours’ the Horrors have produced an atmospheric, haunting and uplifting album. With a sound marked by the soaring, spiralling guitars thrown together with characteristically British vocals it’s reminiscent of 80’s vampire film, like The Lost Boys. Yet despite a gothic style the band has managed to avoid sounding too gloomy by keeping to an upbeat tempo.

Produced by Geoff Barrows (of Portishead), Primary Colours brings out something unexpected from The Horrors, exposing the sounds of their influences like Neu!, Sonic Youth and The Cure. The result is dark, somewhat upbeat, deep and strange.

The songs on ‘Primary Colours’ unfold with promise. A good example of this is ‘Mirrors Image’, which opens the album well. It starts with noise, to eventually graduate and branch out into a fully structured song.

Occasionally though the songs are let down by lyrics that verge on the corny and detract from an otherwise fine album. In ‘Who Can Say’ vocalist Faris Badwan chants;

“And when I told her I didn’t love her anymore, she cried. And when I told her, her kisses were not like before, she cried. And when I told her another girl had caught my eye, She cried. And then I kissed her with a kiss that could only mean goodbye.”

While many fine songs have lyrics that are a little cheesy, in the style of songs on this album that invite close listening they are somewhat exposed. Despite this reservation “Primary Colours” is a fine album with a fair degree of sound, atmosphere and style that allows the cheese to be overlooked.