WORTH A LOOK?: *****
OUT: 12/5/17
TRACKLISTING: All I Have; Circle; Fallen For Your Face; Fine; Guard Dog; Next To Nothing; Uh Oh; Us Vs Ourselves; Welcome To The Fallout; Young Warrior
The best place to start describing the beauty of this debut album by Detroit indie band Lilac Lungs is probably with lead singer Emily Torres’ ethereal vocal.
- Read on for reasons including the video for single Next To Nothing
Her striking voice is the gateway to the heart of all the tunes here. It’s otherworldliness reminds us most of 80s heroes The Sundays who never quite fulfilled their potential.
On second track Circle that voice and a rockier indie styling bring to mind a more current comparison, The Chvrches but elsewhere it is Dolores O’Riordan from the Cranberries that she evokes.
Rippling synths propel third track Fallen For Your Face into orchestral swells with Torres at its centre, wondering: ‘Who would I be if I hadn’t Fallen For Your Face?‘
‘Life may be dark, we feel like we’re falling but we’re gonna be Fine‘. Fine is far poppier, boasting plinkety-plonk synths and a: ‘Woah, oh, oh, we’re gonna be fine’ chorus.
Anxiety takes over on Guard Dog which boasts the lines both ‘Rip away the mongrel that has me between its teeth’, and ‘Close in my chest, shortness of breath, I’m such a mess’.
Single Next To Nothing is the one we loved first. Ambient synths and sinking into water imagery. ‘My walls are breaking down in the collapse of sound, it’s drowning me, yes drowning me in all that I am.’ Emily’s vulnerable vocal switches from the ambient, drawing into an anthemic chorus. Unforgettable is the near yelp: ‘Bring me deeper than before, wash the blood off of my soul’ which repeats.
Uh Oh is immediately poppier with a ‘Wishing nightmares were all we had’ refrain and playfulness in the sprint to the chorus.
Us Vs Ourselves has a catchy unusual keyboard motif and a false ending that bursts us back into the heart of: ‘The battle has begun.’
Things get rockier towards the finish with Welcome To the Fallout and Young Warrior, which appropriately comes out fighting.
An album boasting 10 songs and we find ourselves wanting to cram almost all of them into this review of a quite wonderful first album. Now, where can we see them live? Contender for album of 2017 so far.
monstagigz 