Independent Music

THE HORRORS: SKYING

[rating: 4.5]

THE HORRORS: SKYING

LABEL: XL Recordings

RELEASE DATE: August 9, 2011

Most bands wontedly mature with mileage, but rarely are they able to thrive with the same level of success as The Horrors. In 2007, the band released Strange House; an underrated debut album that has slipped into indie rock obscurity, sounding today, like it was written and recorded by a different group altogether. Two years later, The Horrors released Primary Colours, rightfully shuttling the group into musical notoriety andsetting the pace for their newest record, Skying.

As with most Horrors’ albums this is not necessarily an innovative or unique sounding album, but rather a loud one. This new batch of material leans heavy on an older rock n’ roll and garage rock aesthetic that the band has comfortably visited throughout their career. But on Skying, The Horrors magnify the familiar, and along the way, throw in a range ofother musical influences from shoe-gazeto dream pop, to psychedelia mixed withsome of today’s more prevalent synth jams.

There is a lot of sound on Skying, loud fuzzy guitars,  big riffs,  free-flowing percussion, waving strings, electronics, organic effects and Faris Badwan’s commanding vocals (which have also grown considerable dimensions); but it’s all glued together to complete one masterful puzzle that evades sensory overload. Between the powerful bookends, “Changing the Rain” and “You Said”, two of the band’s most addictive songs to date and“Oceans Burning”, a sprawling 8-minute epic there are no tracks on Skying that lull the album’s progression. Skying is so uniformly composed and tightly arranged that no one song is greater than the next. And because of the albums consistentcy, differentiating the lush atmospherics from song to song, while initally challenging, is one of the most rewarding virtues of the record.

Skying is an album where the parts not only beget the whole, but where the whole synthesizes the parts. It is a collection of songs that succeed individually but absolutely soar when heard as a group. Where, in order to truly unravel just how fantastic a track like “Still Life”is, requires familiarization with the entire album. As you acclimate your ears to thestrata of noise, you’ll find that while Skying follows a cohesive blueprint, it never recycles a singular idea. This is a very fine line, which The Horrors have walked beautifully. In a matter of just four years,The Horrors have recorded a definitive album; mature, focused, and proof that some bands really are better at growing up than others.

-Andrew Bailey