Dear Miss Lonelyhearts opens with a punch. Miracle Mile is an outstanding track, pounding drums and thumping piano pulse away under lead singer Nathan Willett’s soaring vocals, the whole effect is very Florence And The Machine. It sounds, right up the front, like they are looking for their big radio hit. This album, the band’s fourth, contains that idea as an undercurrent for most of its playing time unfortunately – it wants to be liked. I have read the problem has been ascribed to ‘over-production,’ which is a misdiagnosis. Sure, the production is far lusher and more spacious and grand, but if the songs were stripped of that engineering their core would remain a slightly un-Cold War Kids track, left naked asking you to enjoy them. The next two tracks Lost That Easy and Loner Phase especially, with their synth and preprogramed samples, left me longing for the band and sent me back to listen to their debut album Robbers & Cowards. The original oddness and brilliance intertwined to produce something that sounded like no one else, which really should be the goal of every band. Perhaps it’s new recruit, former Modest Mouse guitarist Dann Gallucci, on lead guitar and production, that has them aiming for a more accessible sound.
However persistence pays off. Track five, Tuxedos, is vintage and it’s only up from there. The closing two tracks including the one that gives the album its title are worth the price of admission. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is a transcendent song. It is an uplifting hymn to despair, the lead vocals supported by flying falsetto harmonies. Followed by a similar sounding Bitter Poem, I found myself grateful when the album started playing over from the start – a closing track that makes you want more is a clever thing.
The core of each song is still indebted to Willett’s soulful, dramatic vocals. He skirts very close to over singing, that point where vocalists go from singing a melody to just singing – see every reality TV show about singing for the extreme examples of this – but he is still getting away with it. Not gold from start to finish but plenty to be thankful for.
BY JACK FRANKLIN
Best Track: Dear Miss Lonelyhearts
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE, FRIGHTENED RABBIT
In A Word: Worthwhile
