Embrace
This New Day

THE REVIEW

Embrace, or "hug".

And the music of the band led by the McNamara brothers sounds just like that, like a warm and enveloping hug that transports you to a world made of melodies sometimes delicate, dreamy, and melancholic, other times vigorous, captivating, and epic.

In every album of the band, this alternation of emotions is evident, and it is the same in this "This New Day", the latest work in chronological order from the British group, arriving only a year and a half after the success of the previous "Out Of Nothing" and especially the single "Gravity", a balladic gem written by "his omnipresence" Chris Martin.

Britpop, rock, some gospel elements, just enough melancholy and choruses to shout to the sky alternate in an overwhelming vortex of engaging and never too predictable melodic glimpses, even if the taste for the winning refrain at all costs slightly undermines the excellent overall picture. It is precisely when this last "flaw" is missing that the most interesting things are heard, especially in this "This New Day", where Embrace dare a little more compared to the latest studio attempts. "Exploding Machines", for example, does not start very well with its meticulous echoing of the sound proposed by the penultimate Coldplay ("X & Y"), but then develops a not at all banal plot where the usual attention of the McNamara brothers for the insistent hyper-sugary melody fortunately wanes. The same goes for "Target", where very strange (for the genre of reference) guitar/dance inserts are incorporated, or "Even Smaller Stones", perhaps the most interesting thing produced by Embrace in the last eight years. Here, the sound becomes more challenging and sophisticated, without exaggerating or shaking too much, but surprisingly quite a bit.

It's good also when the now seasoned melancholic soul of the five comes shamelessly to the surface: "I Can’t Come Down", the heart of the album placed in the middle of the tracklist, is a ballad for which at least seventy percent of melodic pop rock bands would give both upper limbs. "Nature’s Law" works as a single (it is the most successful piece in their homeland of the group’s career so far), but ultimately it feels too ingratiating (even though the stadium-like chorus is a delightful tease), whereas "Celebrate" vents in the chorus all the repressed admiration of the British band towards the most emphatic and pompous Bono.

Finally worth noting is the reissue of the album with the insertion at track number four of the second single "World At Your Feet", a cheerful (?) little song chosen by the British Football Federation as the official soundtrack for the English national team at the German World Cup in 2006.

Key tracks: "I Can’t Come Down", "Exploding Machines", "Even Smaller Stones"