The Horrors: Primary Colours

4 out of 5 4

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  3. The Horrors
  4. Primary Colours
  5. XL
  6. 2009

They live! Left for dead after a hype overdose two years ago, Southend's ghost-train garage-rockers have risen again with a second album so daring and accomplished that one is tempted to credit their new producer, Portishead's Geoff Barrow, with Svengaliesque powers of mind control. Even at their most ordinary, they now sound like the Psychedelic Furs featuring Kevin Shields, which is no bad thing. But the biggest surprise, given their prior commitment to brevity, is how fully they inhabit the longer songs. I Only Think of You is a colossal trance-rock nod-out revolving around a scraping cello drone, and Sea Within a Sea's ascendant krautrock - Can by way of the last Portishead album - is several kinds of wonderful. The Horrors' excellent taste, from Spacemen 3 to the Shangri-Las, was never in doubt, but who could have guessed they would metabolise their influences with such bold panache?

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