Horrors

British band Horrors debuted in a mildly aggressive gothic-glam-psychedelic style on Strange House (Loog, 2007). Jack The Ripper is a martial horror pow-wow dance a` la Cramps that accelerates to a demented vaudeville pace. Count In Fives is a Devo-like anthem with swinging acid organ. Draw Japan increases the propulsive dimension with quasi-Neu motorik rhythm and feverish organ. Excellent Choice is a spoof of horror soundtracks, replete with evocative guitar twang and haunting keyboard drones. Thunderclaps compete with Broadway musicals for burlesque emphasis. The second half is less convincing, although the rockabilly of Little Victories and the hysterical Sheena Is A Parasite still pack quite a bit of energy, and the jazzy and dissonant instrumental Gil Sleeping suddenly displays musical skills that were not apparent in the previous jokes.

Primary Colours (XL, 2009) introduced a completely different band, playing a cross between synth-pop and dark-punk that yielded the obnoxious dance-punk tune Mirror's Image, the propulsive and poppy Who Can Say, the soulful and shoegazing Do You Remember, the morbid danceable Scarlet Fields (a` la Joy Division), and the grandiloquent aria Primary Colours; none of which was particularly exciting. The seven-minute threnody I Only Think Of You was perhaps meant to be something like their The End but ends up sounding like an aimless litany. At least the eight-minute Sea Within A Sea along the way picked up a techno beat to beat the monotony. Some of the first album's verve survived in the anthemic Three Decades (the album's fastest song unfurled by a breeze of cosmic keyboards), in the raw I Can't Control Myself (reminiscent of garage-rock of the Sixties), and in the desperate New Ice Age (with echoes of Gun Club and Doors).

Skying (2011) is mostly a confused mess of failed experiments, ranging from the languid lounge synth-pop of the 1980s (Still Life) and the pompous glam-pop of David Bowie (Changing the Rain) to the psychedelic-pop of the "Madchester" era (Monica Gems).