Primary Colours by The Horrors

Stately, haunting church bells, misty washes of synthesizers, this is the becalmed beginning of this stunning record. A minute, ninety seconds of peace and yes it is going to be disturbed. An insistent drumming comes up through the floorboards of the chapel, the bass player wakes up with the melody while a guitar seems to be playing backwards. The main synth line runs bright major-key blips up the stairs to the belfry and back down again before the shattering drum and chainsaw lead guitar crash through the stained glass windows. Faris Badwan wakes up in his black velvet lined coffin and starts singing about you needing to leave a beautiful woman, telling you to "let her memory die, walk out into the night." The loss is borne by you, he's very detached even in the midst of this roller coaster of a song. He's detached from the proceedings throughout the album actually, with the exception of the moment on Who Can Say where he dumps his girlfriend, kissing her "with a kiss that could only mean goodbye." On other parts of the album he might well be singing from Ian Curtis' grave. The music is a wonderful blend of the weary, haunted introspection of The Psychedelic Furs, the inventive intriguing rhythm section interplay of Joy Division and a lot of the splashes of the shimmering glow that My Bloody Valentine captured in the studio. The titles of Three Decades and New Ice Age are particularly overt in reverent reference to the legacy of Joy Division, the bass and tambourine intro to I Only Think of You is very mindful of the JD song New Dawn Fades or The Psychedelic Furs' Sister Europe while the last half of Scarlet Fields could almost BE an MBV song. Lots of shoegazer synth candy to digest on the record, like the sonic wall of guitars on Do You Remember and the beautiful central musical theme of the title track. <br>
The last track, Sea Within A Sea takes the beautiful grooves laid down by Neu! and Kraftwerk and sails them "across the shallows" to the end of this brilliant record.