The Welsh trio’s 14th studio album is their first number 1 since 1998, contains their classic sound, defiant, power-rock melancholy and overt politics, but also a rippling piano sound that echoes some of Abba’s big hits. James Dean Bradfield makes many a cri de coeur tell-not-show lyric about society and government, and opener Still Snowing in Sapporo has their distinctive musical swagger, but the Abba element pops up liberally, particularly on Orwellian, a song grappling with the digital esponiage age (“We live in Orwеllian times/ A deepening sense of fear and crime”), The Secret He Had Missed (with Julia Cumming on guest vocals), and the melancholy creative struggles described on Quest for Ancient Colour (“Images remade themselves /I explored internal galaxies /The boys of summer had upped and gone/ Girls in their summer dress had gone”) another song wrestling with the internet age. There’s a pointed remark about the Tories with “those boys from Eton” on Don’t Let the Night Divide Us, also in between big Abba-style chorus and piano flourishes. It’s all catchy, quality stuff of course, with the usual guitar solos thrown in, but still an unexpected throwback to 70s piano pop. Mark Lanegan’s deep, dark voice, always with great presence, guesting on the downbeat Blank Diary Entry, makes a strange contrast in to the overall vivid technicolour and the “glitter curtains” mentioned on the opening track. Out on Columbia / Sony.
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