The Horrors have confirmed that they will shortly be returning to the music fold with a fourth studio album, Luminous, and to mark the occasion they’ve released the first track from their new material, the cryptically titled, I See You. To give you a taste of what to expect, you can take a listen to the song below, but at 7 minutes long you’d better strap yourself in for the long haul, especially if you’re going to read our I See You review as well.
Following up on 2011’s Skying was never going to be easy with such a souring deck of ace tracks and mix of broad canvases with flashing melodies. However, from the sound of I See You, Luminous should be poised to pick things up where The Horrors left things last time around. The downside, though, is that the minor criticism of having a bit too much space at times in Skying is all the more acute on their latest song.
While there’s a shoe-gazers soundscape with wandering vocals, there’s also a bit to much pop in certain areas of the track for it to live up to the high standards we’ve started to expect from the band on the back of the quality of Skying. That’s not to say that is all negatives – the verses are crafted from prog connotations and a raconteur’s chat, the echoing guitar chops are class and the amazing synth-fuelled introduction feels like the building wave of a wall of noise – but there are just a few too many downsides for it to be the vengeance comeback we were hoping for.
One of the biggest let downs is the underwhelming chorus, which dissipates the squall that you think you’re going to get on the back of the verse with instant and resolute greyness. It’s the main culprit for the out of character pop references in the song.
Hit and miss lyrics are another negative that splits the chorus from the verse with smart and intelligently-laced dialogue in the verse and a disappointing chant of I See You variants in the chorus. It’s not all great in the verse either as broken rhymes and random messages burst through at the otherwise imperceptible seams. The fact that they’re a big part of the video, splattered in the background, means that they’re tough to look past and hard to forgive.
Where the songs misses it’s chance of reprisal is in the instrumental, which is empty at best. Though it’s souring and spectral, with no discernible riff whatsoever it just feels a bit meh. Throw in a half decent reverb soaked melody, jagged guitar riff, a few keys or a slide guitar saunter and you have the potential of a masterpiece to hang over the void, but for some reason The Horrors have just left it bare.
While I See You doesn’t exactly instil us with confidence for the rest of Luminous, we’re going to stick it out on the hopeful and optimistic fence for now. We’ll have to wait until it’s release on the 5th May to find out for sure. I See You is already out for digital download if the video below takes your fancy.
The Horrors, I See You review: 3.2/5
Too much Echo & the Bunnymen sound. Needs to be more original.