So here's my views on the work of four bands whose 2013 releases I have been anticipating keenly:
Arc - Everything Everything
Arc is a fantastic development upon their debut Man Alive showing greater consistency throughout maintaining the verbosity, harmonies and catchy riffs that have brought EE success. While I think individual songs like My Kz Ur Bf, Suffragette Suffragette and Schoolin' are all better than any individual tracks are better than the best moments on Arc there's not nearly as many mistakes made. The content still makes great use of an elaborate lexicon and is fit very well to keep up a good flow. Cough Cough is a fantastic example of them using many an unorthodox image in quick succession along with prominent drums throughout to make a fetching number.
Holy Fire - Foals
Now I was expecting a lot from Foals new album after how much I enjoyed Total Life Forever, but there's a number of things I think let it down. For one, when the opening lyrics of the album (and lead single) are "Sticks and stones don't break my bones" it doesn't scream of creativity, rather it makes it sound like a twelve year old wrote the lyrics, that or Rihanna. Nevertheless both Inhaler and My Number have proven popular with many an indie clubber so in that sense they have been a success. As well there seems to be a loss of the knack for intros that they had throughout their last album, which is a problem when one of the greatest strengths in their past work is their ability to build. Providence is a splendid example of this: the first 25 seconds are wasted diving straight in only to start again from scratch, nonetheless its climactic instrumental which completes the song, capped by an even more spectacular drum fill than on After Glow is proof positive that they are still able to construct an excellent song even though it basically has to be compacted into three and a half minutes.
The Weight of Your Love - Editors
So I've already given my take on the albums's first single A Ton of Love and was apprehensive of the level of quality that they would display. Having owned it for two weeks now, the album for me starts at track five. The first four tracks appear to be the band trying to show that they've matured, in reality it comes across as the soporific, saccharin spewing of middle-aged men; In all honesty how can songs such called Sugarand What Is This Thing Called Love be anything but insipid? Then again Editors show they are far from losing their intensity on Two Hearted Spider and their pensiveness and passion on The Phone Book and the string heavy Nothing . The Special Edition came with a second disc which featured two acoustic covers and three extra songs which should definitely have been on the album: The Sting is definitely worth a listen and having been one of the first new songs to surface after In This Light and On This Evening and capturing many a fans imagination, it surprises me it's relegated to b-side status.
Formaldehyde is a vivacious rocker and will be the second single released from the album. I have to say that it should have been the lead single, as it'd be much more likely to get attention than the foray into sounding like U2 that is A Ton of Love. The final thing to say is while hugely approve of the song, the lurid cover art doesn't do anything for me.
Promises - The Boxer Rebellion
Diamonds is a great opener to the album with a terrific guitar riff and a lively beat, in a similar manner to the earlier single Step Out of the Car. On the flipside this is a potentially solid album let down because of the majority of its tracks having terse, incongruous lyrics. For instance, in the track New York the brief utterance "In New York" is repeated apropos of nothing we've already heard or go on to hear on the track or the album. Moreover the naming of a number of tracks, including the title track, come across as McGuffins, and doing this with Promises watermarks the other tracks as somewhat ill-conceived seeing as this is the name they want to be indentified as epitomizing the LP.
