Newcastle’s Lanterns on the Lake have quietly gone about the business of perfecting their mood music. Each time they surface, their music gains another level of intensity and assumes a greater focus. This progress suggests their second album, Until the Colours Run, won’t be the culmination of their journey, but it does take them to a stage where they could extend their audience to any size they wish.
Until the Colours Run is reflective modern rock with roots in Mazzy Star and latter-day Sigur Rós. The glitchiness of their debut, Gracious Tide, Take me Home, has largely gone, replaced by a forward thrust and a new sense of dynamics which yanks Hazel Wilde’s fractured voice from a dark, windowless room into the sudden bright light of a meteor shower. The album opens with “Elodie”, a dense, soaring eulogy where she sings of bodies weeping and friends heading home. The desolate, almost solo, “Green and Gold” is about failing to learn lessons from life.
Since Gracious Tide, Take me Home, Lanterns on the Lake have reconfigured their line-up. The change seems to have made them more direct. The theme running through Until the Colours Run is of a Britain which is fragmenting: of those sold a thousand lies and escaping in “Another Tale From Another English Town”, and the lost cause of “Our Cool Decay”. This album might be a state of the nation address, but it’s also nuanced and affecting.
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