Do you like Hurts? Their 3rd album Surrender is out 9/10. monstagigz was in the audience for the 1st show for this album 16/6 Scala.

We’ve seen Hurts, ooh, probably 10 times over the last five years, and the Scala show was interesting because there was at last a sense about where 3rd album Surrender might go. If first two albums Happiness and Exile were an 80s band, they would be Depeche Mode.

What was interesting about the Scala gig was that there was a predominantly-female black choir doing the backing vocals for several songs, bringing to mind Like A Prayer Madonna.

However it would appear single Some Kind Of Heaven (one of those new songs with that new pop sound) fared badly everywhere, including Hurts’ target market in Germany. 

To us, grat track Rolling Stone (track five on the album) is a nod to the past – amazing lyric, tremendously downbeat and essentially everything we’ve heard before.

And so to Lights (YouTube clip above not played at the Scala), Hurts best single since Wonderful Life.

Lights is nothing like that. It’s very early 80s Prince. The whole 80s Like A Prayer vibe makes sense in its context. Looking for that moment when your favourite band embraces 80s, overindulges but kills it? I’m not sure Hurts will ever be terribly popular in the UK. Lights should be on every radio you own but won’t be.