Modern magic
Post-punk electronica-tinged favourites return for their first album in eight years, and with the line-up that recorded 1981’s debut Mesh & Lace. It’s an uplifting affair at times, if such can be said of a band that still relish their Joy Division influence, with guitar and keyboards reaching for the sky on tracks such as Not Fake.
There are plenty of New Order-like throbbing basslines, not least on Exploding, with Robbie Grey’s dark, distorted vocals and “danger of death” chorus chant, a five-minute epic. Crazy Lovers, meanwhile, is a classic three-minute electro-pop single.
Somewhere in between is Genius, a laconic, chugging number driven by Gary McDowell’s guitar riff. Echoes of the past but very much of today. Nick Dalton
