Forty years on, their 18th LP makes no such commitments. But, if the 21st Century initially looked like it had left the band behind, recent albums - not least 2018's Walk Between Worlds - suggested otherwise.
Direction Of The Heart will doubtless maintain the last decade's chart-tickling run, and including an updated interpretation of their debut demo's exhilarating Act of Love will do them no harm. Its youthful pounding ambitions are merely more polished now and, like Solstice Kiss, whose low-key, Celtic-flavoured introduction belies its later, angular guitar scrapes, this ancient tune exploits Kerr's underused lower register to almost seductive effect.
With the call of the arenas irresistible, however, this comparatively subtle return to earlier days is short-lived. Despite the album's sombre genesis - Kerr began writing with guitarist Charlie Burchill while monitoring his ill father in Glasgow - Direction Of The Heart isn't short of overfamiliar 'Big Music' bombast, and its epic lyrical aspirations stand up to little scrutiny. Kerr employs archaic, quasi-poetic language ("I wakened up and I was able to see") on Vision Thing, whose tune is bluntly underscored by Burchill's guitars, while Planet Zero starts with tumbling drums, hefty synths and Sarah Brown bellowing a warning - "Whole world on fire!" -before their attention turns to escapist rather than environmental concerns.
Natural, too, feels like it was constructed by a Kwik Fit fitter and Human Traffic is similarly contrived, its major key melody weary, its arrangement like Big Country with flashy keyboards.
Natural, too, feels like it was constructed by a Kwik Fit fitter and Human Traffic is similarly contrived, its major key melody weary, its arrangement like Big Country with flashy keyboards.
Still, it's about life's endless cycle so its predictability is perhaps excusable, and at least Kerr's vocals are reinforced by Sparks' Russell Mael's operatic strains. Anyway, it might be stretching things to demand revelations from a band this long in the tooth, especially when First You Jump canters like a Caledonian Springsteen and The Walls Came Down, the second song they've covered (after 2014's Let The Day Begin) by The Call's late Michae Been, finds Kerr going full Bono amid Numan-esque synths.
They're still alive and kicking, they still display promise, and anyway, like they sang enigmatically in 1982, "Belief's a beauty thing".
Tracks: 1. Vision Thing // 2. First You Jump // 3. Human Traffic // 4. Who Killed Truth? // 5. Solstice Kiss // 6. Act of Love // 7. Natural // 8. Planet Zero // 9. The Walls Came Down // 10. Direction of the Heart (Taormina 2022) //
11. Wondertimes
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.