It won’t seem to be it, with its heat guitars and delicate harmonies, however Our Lady’s ‘The Good Type’ is oddly daring. That is a kind of old school, front-to-back albums greatest understood by means of bouts of shut listening, its many wealthy hooks and lyrical feints coming into focus over time. On this age of streaming-optimised grab-and-go record-making, it’s a little bit of a unicorn.
If it’s much less direct than the trio’s 2018 debut, ‘Stranger In the present day’, it makes up for it with a quietly adventurous textural strategy. This album wears its nuances confidently whereas executing incremental shifts in tone and pacing with precision and care. It’s telling that its largest earworm second – the refrain of the peerlessly snarky single ‘One thing About Me Being A Lady’ – is caused mainly by vocalist Soph Nathan’s willingness to let the cadence of the hook slowly sink in reasonably than make it something pyrotechnic.
In some ways, Nathan continues to flip the script on her work as guitarist within the Massive Moon, buying and selling out that band’s fizzing indie-pop in favour of one thing ruminative however equally melodic. Throughout the report’s noisier moments, for instance, there may be the sensation of Britpop’s outsized swagger being remade as one thing refined and introspective.
The wordless chorus of ‘One thing Thrilling’ may have, in numerous circumstances, been deployed as a roof-raising communal singalong. As an alternative, it has a plaintive, pleading air to it. So, too, the descending chords of ‘I Don’t Thoughts’, which amble as a substitute of strut. Then there’s the brilliantly riffy ‘What You Advised Me’, which is low-key anthemic whereas doubling as a poetic dialogue of significant sickness. “You’ll battle all of the whereas / Then dawning in your smile a flicker / A flash of white,” Nathan sings earlier than the second refrain drops.
Work on ‘The Good Type’ was cut up between periods at Rockfield with John Parish – he of a number of data with PJ Harvey, plus latest outings with Aldous Harding and Dry Cleansing – and the house studio of Fern Ford, Nathan’s bandmate within the Massive Moon. Between the 2, the band – accomplished by bassist Joshua Tyler and drummer Lauren Wilson – struggled to reconcile what they’d with what they wished.
That dissonance nearly brought about them to stroll away from the venture, however there are few, if any, remnants of artistic uncertainty on the completed LP. Extra so, there’s the sense that this existential wrangling served to double their resolve. This isn’t music that’s not sure of itself; as a substitute, ‘The Good Type’ is glad to exist by itself phrases.
Particulars
- Launch date: November 8, 2024
- File label: Bella Union
