Live: The Horrors

27th September

Albert Hall

6/10

Ignore the tight jeans and the baggy hairstyles, this isn’t a one-off horror show. This is just another stop on the tour machine for Faris Badwan and Co. The lights are on—blindingly so at times—but is anyone really at home within this band of misfits?

Everyone’s heard the stories about The Horrors of old. Nowadays Faris barely talks to the crowds, let alone throw black paint over them. Despite the production of the night being flashier and louder than ever before, the band feels distant. The song choices aren’t bad—there’s an excellent back catalogue here—but they are boringly predictable. From opening with the first track on their new album (‘Chasing Shadows’) to ending with the same track they’ve closed with for the last three years (‘Moving Further Away’). Truly epic tracks like ‘Sea Within a Sea’ are still too good to be cut down and used to pad out the middle of a set. But unfortunately it was, and I could barely hear that bit that sounds like a whale love song. What a travesty.

If the problem is with the music, it comes down to the new album. Luminous has its beautiful moments born out of the loving self-produced sounds. But played live alongside raw psychedelic punk tunes like ‘Scarlet Fields’ dilutes the essence of both. The new tracks sound muddy and the older tracks from Primary Colours have lost their edge.

But for a band like The Horrors, sometimes just being there is enough. Their avid fans push and shove about, like it was only yesterday that they cried their paint-filled eyes out after hearing their first album Strange House live for the very last time. Since then, The Horrors have learnt how to spoon feed their fans what they want. Today it was a decent show with impressive lights and set list designed to promote the new album. But this bowl of post-punk-psychedelic-shoe-gaze-electro-pop (with a hint of disco?) is starting to smell a little off. There’s still time left, maybe it’s the time for a radical new flavour?