Their name is Portuguese for miracles. Aiming high with their handle hasn’t prevented the Brooklyn-based Milagres from being criticised for their supposed Coldplay leanings. Sure, singer and main man Kyle Wilson has a tendency to stretch the middle of words out and there is a yearning, windswept feel to much of their debut album. Elbow and Grizzly Bear can be chucked into the pot too, but what they most sound like is a Mercury Rev/Talk Talk smoothie.
The production of Glowing Mouth is crisp. Precise. Milagres’s lyrics are less specific. “Lost in the dark” sings Wilson on song of the same name. “Feeling the way”, he continues. Where is he lost? Why? “Fright of Thee” opens with the line “I was lost in a field”. On an album crammed with angst about the unidentified, it’s best to dwell on the music, much of which is wonderful. Gently epic is an oxymoron, but that’s what Milagres are. No matter how their songs build, they don’t become stadium-sized chants. “Gone”, with its Supertramp “Dreamer”-style piano, is the acme. The verses float on a shimmering bed of keyboards and treated guitar held down by forceful, yet distant, drumming. They give way to an airborne chorus. Glowing Mouth is the sound of a band taking off.
It's so assured it doesn’t feel like a debut album, and it isn’t really. Milagres used to be called Secret Life of Sofia and issued the less-focused, largely acoustic album Seven Summits in 2008. Rebranding was clearly the right move. If Milagres do catch on, Coldplay-style, great. If they don’t, Glowing Mouth is still an album to get lost in. The band would understand that.
Watch the video for “Halfway” from Milagres’s Glowing Mouth
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