The Horrors
Primary Colours

The Horrors have created a great album. Yes, exactly, those charming, buffoonish, backcombed, and straightened individuals, with a nervy demeanor and a probable poster of Peter Murphy hung up in their room. Now, I don't exactly know what the average age of a typical "debaseriota" is, but even a not-so-mature twenty-year-old like me found them gaudy at first glance. I can imagine then how someone a few years older would view them... plastic stuff, constructed at the table and to be avoided. I doubt anyone had the imagination to bet a penny on the success of such elements here. And yet... and yet no. Sometimes not all the make-up is harmful, and if you have a bit of patience and good faith in a "pincopallino" who, in the end, receives nothing in return for praising them, I'll explain why.

Main premise: I haven’t listened to their previous work because, as already mentioned, I was prejudiced against them. I think I will, even though I don’t expect much. And now let's move on to the album and start by using two words that I suppose are fundamental to understand what it’s about: shoegaze and new wave. Neither the why nor the how is known, but The Horrors of 2009 had the brilliant (??) idea of borrowing dissonances made by My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain and using them in a good part of the tracks. Tracks that, for that matter, all sound, without distinction, new wave. In "Primary Colours" (this should be given the right credit, given the times), you can really hear a bit of everything and more, so much so that, if one wanted to unearth all the influences, citations, and similarities present in the album, one could write a review composed exclusively of the names of other bands. Obviously, citationism cannot always be considered a virtue, especially when it comes at the expense of originality... and that’s where the hitch lies. There’s little to do; the debate that has been going on since the times of "Turn On The Bright Lights" (which I conceptually consider very close to this) is once again served. Does it make sense, in 2009, to propose yet another mix of dark-wave sounds updated to modern production standards? Yes, because it is better to be clear and round at this point: The Horrors haven’t created anything new, nor do they have the presumption of being a "new thing" as some might mistakenly think. In fact, they themselves have admitted otherwise. They've simply made the album they wanted to make, helped in the endeavor by Geoff Barrow of Portishead (it's impossible not to notice his touch in the mega-single "Sea Within a Sea," an almost 8-minute final ride which I’ll talk about later) and to a lesser extent by Chris Cunningham (a name a guarantee, although this time he’s behind the mixer). So I don’t know if it’s so lawful to blame them if we can recognize Ian Curtis in the gloomy "Scarlet Fields", dominated by the typical "Joy Division-like" bassline, or in the initial, atmospheric, and rarefied "Mirror's Image." The same goes for Peter Murphy, with whom Faris shares the neurotic and declamatory singing—take "New Ice Age" as an example, the most dissonant track of the lot—and there’s no need to mention Robert Smith because it comes naturally.

A separate mention must be made for "I Only Think Of You," a Joy Division-like (again?) piece arranged in the manner of the Velvet Underground of Banana-era memory (!!) and which represents, along with the concluding song, the absolute peak of the album. No joke, I swear at the beginning of the song I almost expected Nico to start singing at any moment! (I hope it’s not blasphemy, it reminds me a bit of "All Tomorrow’s Parties... played by My Bloody Valentine). The aforementioned "Sea Within A Sea" picks up the thread from the Portishead-like "The Rip", where the keyboards kick in and the track starts to take off. There’s not much to say about this song, except that it should be listened to immediately to draw proper conclusions. Either it really cites Kraut-rock or I’m going deaf (I fear I suspect the answer...). Moving on, in "I Can’t Control Myself," and here I want to be quite pedantic, it really sounds like "Come Together" by Spiritualized (the chords are the same, no jokes!) while the title track is practically a Cure piece... but no, maybe Bowie... NO, I recognize it, it’s a Psychedelic Furs track with the keyboard instead of the saxophone! "Pretty in Pink"! The only track I could define as "modern," based solely on the distortion used (very Smashing Pumpkins... or Placebo in the worst case), is the second single "Who Can Say," an "easy-listening" piece that stubbornly sticks in your head without much politeness. The album contains ten songs, making it a bit difficult to find "fillers;" in fact, it’s rather cohesive and each track seems to have its own purpose (oh dear, that "Do You Remember" might be the only one just making up the numbers, but it’s nothing disastrous anyway).

Conclusion: Masterpiece? I don’t think so. I don’t know how this album, which today appears so beautiful and inspired to me, will age, and after the blunder with "Viva La Vida," a bit of snobbishness has stuck with me. If it fares well, it will certainly become a new classic, as the debut of Interpol can already be considered. That’s not little, and obviously, I'm hoping so as the first. I’m twenty, I love new wave and the undeniable masterpieces it has generated, but this cannot, for clear generational reasons, represent what it represented for those who were young during its period of glory. Hence, this album can only appeal to individuals (hopefully not inhuman) like me, because it is a product of my generation, a new record yet extremely indebted to a period that does not belong to it. In closing, I’m posting the two singles "Who Can Say" and "Sea Within A Sea".

To posterity, the difficult judgment... in my small way, approved.