It’s like it’s 2009 all over again

It may have been just five years ago, but 2009 seems like the distant past. I was still in sixth form, and, more importantly for the context of this review, I had fully immersed myself in the wide world of music. The landfill indie of my teenage years had been put to one side, and I was making the most of my discovery that alternative music meant a hell of a lot more than The Libertines. It was a great time to be getting into alternative music as well with Animal Collective’s_Merriweather Post Pavilion_, The Flaming Lips’ brilliant double album Embryonic and Grizzly Bear‘s _Veckatemist _all released in 2009. There were also superb debuts from Japandroids, tUnE-yArDs and, admittedly in 2008, Titus Andronicus.

There were three albums that were ever present on my iPod classic though: _Hospice _by The Antlers, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s eponymous debut album and Primary Colours by The Horrors. Hospice is a dream pop / slowcore concept album about a hospice worker falling in love with a patient. It is absolutely heartbreaking, and one of my all time favourite records to this day. The Pains record was very heavily indebted to shoegaze behemoth My Bloody Valentine but with a pop sensibility nowhere to be seen on Loveless. The Horrors were perhaps the oddity, in that their debut Strange House, a horror punk meets The Strokes type affair, had been one of my favourites during the landfill indie stage. Primary Colours was something else entirely though. Gone was any trace of garage rock, and in its place was a psychedelic shoegaze record ending with the utterly genius Sea Within a Sea.

All three bands released albums in 2011, with The Antlers’ _Burst Apart _being the pick of the bunch. Instead of trying to match the emotional depth of Hospice, they went down the textured dream pop route, with reasonable success. The Pains’ Belong was very much a slightly worse version of their debut whilst The Horrors’ Skying felt like a no risk Primary Colours by numbers and I really didn’t see the point. Coincidentally, all three have new albums out this year as well. The Antlers’ Familiars is due out in June, whilst The Horrors’ _Luminous _came out this week and the Pains new album Days of Abandon was released back in April. It’s been five years, so what has become of these old favourites?

All three records start with a pretty dull track. The Antlers open with a long boring dream pop track that sounds somewhere between Hospice and Burst Apart with none of the charm of either. The Horrors also go for some benign dream pop, with none of the creativity of _Primary Colours _and lots of the banality that made _Skying _so forgettable. The Pains track is just bland as shit. There is very little feedback though, which implies that, against all odds, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have changed direction. In reality, all three of them have to different extents. All three of them are definitely better than the first track would imply though.

The Antlers record manges to get through another couple of really dull elongated dream pop numbers before the good stuff, with _Doppelganger _and Hotel both being very forgettable. _Intruders _is much better though. It’s still a long dream pop song, but with it’s occasional staccato guitar jabs and lilting vocal melody it’s a much better crafted track. The piano laden Revisited and the chamber pop inspired Parade are also really pretty tracks. The final track, Refuge, has an almost sexy guitar part, and I never thought I’d write that in an Antlers review, but then it also kind of works. Instrumentally, this is probably as good as the Antlers have ever released. The arrangements have the same lush textures as Burst Apart, but with a variety and coherence that was missing on that record. There’s still something not quite right though.

Peter Silberman has one of the best voices in indie. Whether it’s his hauntingly delicate falsetto or his anguished wailing, it was Silberman’s voice that made Hospice so spectacular, but it’s also the weak point here. His voice was the perfect vehicle for the subject matter of Hospice. Vulnerability and anguish are exactly what you want for songs about the love of your life dying of cancer, the kids you never had with her and the dreams you still have about her now she’s gone. Compared to that, tracks about growing up and feeling a bit disjointed about it just sounds a bit disingenuous. They may have withdrawn the heavy subject matter with Burst Apart, but they also reined in Silberman’s anguish, and that worked. They tried to create something sepearate, that could be judged on its own merits, and it worked. This seems like a regression back towards the hallowed turf of Hospice, and it ends up taking the worst parts of the two albums. It’s not bad, and if I’m being honest, I’d be really excited if a new band came out with this. The Antlers set the bar too high with Hospice, and I’m slightly annoyed that they are even trying to jump over it again.

The Pains have a lot less pressure on them. _Belong _was a fairly forgettable rehash of the debut, and I was fully expecting another lazy effort from them with this one. As such, they come out of it looking a lot better than the Antlers. _Days of Abandon _is a far from perfect album, in fact it’s probably a lot more flawed than Familiars, but it feels a lot fresher. After the uninspiring opener comes Simple and Sure, a song that sounds more like The New Pornographers than it does My Bloody Valentine. It’s straight up North American indie pop and it’s not half bad. The next track, Kelly, isn’t even a little bit bad. A bouncy little indie pop number with a super catchy riff and a shimmering jangly background, it really does sparkle. It’s distinctly something they would write, but the production elevates it to something different. This is the legacy of acts like The Smiths and Felt, and it’s really quite superb.

Up next is another curveball. TPOBPAH have always done shoegaze with a pop sensibility, and after three tracks of pop sensibility with minimal shoegaze I really hadn’t prepared myself for shoegaze with minimal pop sensibility. This is perhaps where the album lets itself down. There is virtually no coherence. Along with blatant MBV worship in _Beautiful You _and Until the Sun Explodes, the rest of the album contains a few more New Pornographers inspired tracks in _Eurydice _and Life After Life and a dreamy closer that has no place on this album.

The good tracks here are really good, and there’s quite a few great ones. Eurydice, Kelly and Until the Sun Explodes are all some of the best work the band has done, and the only weak points are the opener, closer and Coral and Gold. This isn’t a stone cold classic like the debut, but then it was never going to be, and at least it’s better than _Belong. _ This shows that the Pains weren’t a one album wonder, and that there’s still something potentially really good in the tank, even if this isn’t quite it.

The Horrors were the band for whom I had the least expectations. Of the three albums mentioned at the beginning, Primary Colours is the one I play least frequently nowadays, and after the extremely dry _Skying _I had pretty much given up on them. I decided to give Luminous a listen, and I’m glad I did. They aren’t playing it safe this time around. This is at least as varied as Primary Colours, and whilst it’s a bit more hit and miss, it’s still one of the more exciting albums I’ve heard this year.

So Now You Know is a pulsating, swirling track with a catchy hook and so much else going on besides. It’s the best thing they’ve done since Sea Within a Sea, but there’s plenty more to interest the listener. Jealous Sun admittedly basically is a My Bloody Valentine, but it’s good enough to forgive, whilst Falling Star channels some of the sound that Tame Impala have perfected, but with a twinkly synth creating an almost playful atmosphere.

There are few less successful tracks. In and Out of Sight has a dancey sort of thing going on that doesn’t really work in the context of the song, let alone the albumand the dream pop leviathan bookends aren’t ideal. That being said, unless the Horrors are failing in trying something new this time around. The mistake on Skying was in a lack of ambition, but there’s plenty of that here, even if it leads to a few mistakes. The Horrors clearly aren’t done yet, and I don’t think it’s that absurd to think they might be able to top Primary Colours next time around.

My nostalgic revisiting of these three bands has produced a fairly predictable response. I had the biggest emotional connection with the Antlers and they have disappointed me by releasing something I just can’t care about as much. The Pains have already disappointed me and I expected them to continue to do so, and they receive a partonising pat on the head for at least trying a bit harder this time around. The Horrors on the other hand, who I had no real expectations of at all, have actually released a really good record this time around.