If Royal Blood’s petulant snipes on the uninterested pop viewers of Radio 1’s Massive Weekend in Dundee didn’t serve to remind the nation what “rock music” was, native heroes The View went one additional. Like their indie rock forefathers, and their punk forefathers earlier than them, they let the world know they’d reformed after a five-year hiatus and had a brand new, sixth album on the best way by having an excellent old style punch up onstage at a rest room venue in Manchester. “A brotherly bust-up that went too far,” they defined, in time-honoured indie gossip web page style, and whereas Twitter (do not forget that?) clutched its digital pearls in outrage, the sleaze rockers of 2006 hunkered down for a correct outdated ‘Wasted Little DJs’ type on-record brawl.
Which ‘Exorcism Of Youth’ undoubtedly isn’t. Because the title suggests, the Dundee four-piece arrived in producer Youth’s studio in Granada, Spain, able to shed their formative raucousness and align themselves with the profitable, extra polished modern indie rock of The Lathums, The Snuts and different such bands which people seem genetically incapable of appreciating whereas south of the M6. The title monitor and first single ‘Feels Like’ introduce the album in simply such anthemic mode: prime down, sunnies out, XFM on, dashing down the closest Propaganda. With guitars set to sky-dive, drums to Sundown and keyboards to Brightside, it’s life-affirming stuff, whilst ‘Feels Like’ means that singer Kyle Falconer’s tendency in direction of inner-city angst has survived effectively into his thirties. “I’m residing a nightmare, not a dream”, he sings, detailing the very public woes of being the city cuckold as if it’s one thing to scream from the rooftops.
From there, the file may simply slide into the playlist indie furrow: bare-chested heartbreak, choruses to shoulder-lift girlfriends to, mid-afternoon pageant slots, bosh. Certainly, The Strokes crackle to ‘The Marvel Of It All’ and ‘Girl Of The 12 months’ (“I’m finished with the medicine ‘trigger they wreck my bones…will you continue to love me once I’m clear?”) is reassuringly compulsive however will solely add to hypothesis that conventional guitar music obtained caught in an inescapable suggestions loop round 2008. Fortunately, ‘Exorcism…’ has ambition up its sleeve. ‘Arctic Solar’ repurposes a Celtic reel for glam punk functions. ‘Shovel In His Arms’ takes on a darkish carnival tone, engaging the listener to bounce with the satan to its insidious, morbid rock groove. And by its second half, the album is hoofing fashionable indie rock conventions overboard by the barrel-load.
‘Allergic To Mornings’ may virtually be a Jeff Lynne manufacturing, with its idyllic Beatle-y largesse; ‘Neon Lights’ pure synthpunk gutter-crawling. ‘Footprints In The Sand’ ventures into cosmic electro goth, whereas ‘Tangled’ seems to have taken some severe hallucinogens whereas listening to Phil Collins’ ‘…However Severely’. There are by-numbers ‘80s electropop tracks (‘Dixie’) and confetti strewn Coldplay showstoppers (‘Black Mirror’) – and satisfying ones at that – however what at first resembled a cap-in-hand re-application to the indie rock fraternity ends as minor coup, restructuring its drained constitutions and pointing all method of how out of the rut. The View, of their method, nonetheless have imaginative and prescient.
Particulars
- Launch date: August 18, 2023
- Document label: Cooking Vinyl