Archive
Lights

THE REVIEW

Reaching their fifth album in ten years, Archive seems to have completely lost the thread of the narrative initiated with their extraordinary debut album.

Ah! “Londinium,” what a record! It still gets played often today. A kind of deviant trip-hop. Then came “Take My Head” which veered towards more conventional pop-rock, yet not bland, "You All Look The Same To Me" echoed certain mid-seventies Pink Floyd, certainly derivative, but highly appreciated, “Noise”, alas, marked the first real misstep, getting tangled in completely soulless electronic layers.

With “Lights” comes the unmistakable sign that the creative source has dried up, and the band has produced a flat work marking a stagnation period that has now been going on for almost half a decade.
Let's be clear, it's not all to be discarded, but the sensation of apathetic emptiness that emerges after the eleven tracks is decidedly strong. The album revolves around the title track, a whopping over eighteen minutes placed at mid-tracklist which, despite the title, doesn’t emit even a glimmer. An endless track that perhaps, in intention, wanted to quote the more famous Again.
But as we know, results sometimes don’t align with intentions. Progressive trend in a contemporary key, crescendos, and grandeur typical of the genre, but I assure you that reaching the end is truly wearying and noting that my underwear starts to feel inadequate is more than just a feeling.

The rest of the program unfolds on more conventional songs in the scope of rock music, not disdaining to dip into unplugged territories (believe it or not!) as in the case of Fold and I Will Fade which hark back to melodies reminiscent of Coldplay. To stay in the realm of connections, one can sense something of the Radiohead 'Amnesiac' period in the concluding Taste Of Blood, or sudden changes of pace in territories already trodden by Primal Scream as in the case of Programmed.
The impression one gets is that of a disjointed work without a precise guiding line: a blow to the hoop and one to the cask. But this would be a venial sin. What more makes you regret the 20 euros spent, is the almost total lack of songs. Yes, exactly. I can’t recall a song that moved me.

As usual, the specialized magazines will ignore Archive as they have unfairly done all these years, but this time who can blame them?