Release Date: January 14, 2014
Next time, instead of popping Ambien, you can just listen to the British band, Lanterns on the Lake’s new album, Until the Colours Run. The mostly slow, soft rock ballads punctuated with electronic, minimalist sounds and folk tunes are beyond slow; they could put listeners to sleep.
Lead singer Hazel Wilde’s vocals lack energy or any kind of spark. Instead, her singing is at best uninspiring and sounds like a broken record in every song. It’s soft, but erratic, and that’s just the beginning of this incredibly unremarkable album.
None of the tunes are memorable; they blur into one another so that it’s impossible to pinpoint any standout moments. The album’s only striking aspect is Wilde’s voice, which sounds dull, flat, and outright depressing.
If there are any bright spots in this album, they are few and far between. One, the band has talent, at least when it comes to playing—the songwriting is another story.
Wilde does a great job playing the piano, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Gregory has some wonderful moments on the keyboard. The electronic aspects of the music remain soft and sparse.
There is also some shift in dynamics and tempo within songs, but not enough to make the music exciting. For example, the first track, “Elodie,” starts off with a bang. The song mixes quick-tempo hard rock with Wilde’s slow, light vocals as a sound like tap dancing feet rings in the background.
Most of the songs on Until the Colours Run elicit dark, haunting, and political tones.
Arguably the band’s most important song, “Another Tale From Another English Town,” talks about the hard times coming, with widespread job loss and government cuts. The tune is quiet, soft, and haunting. Wilde’s tone reflects sadness rather than anger. She feels everybody in her town is resigned to their fate, and she ends the song singing, “We don’t want to fight/We want a quiet life/Wish our lives away, wish our lives away.”
While much of the album is similarly cynical, there are moments of optimism. “Green and Gold” reminds listeners that in hard times, love can make them forget about their fear.
Unfortunately, Until the Colours Run does not burst with any huge amount of color or life that reaches out from the darkness. It doesn’t burst with anything, really. For the most part, it simply sounds lifeless. Until the Colours Run might be beneficial in curing someone’s insomnia, but that’s about it.
Lanterns on the Lakes – Until the Colors Run tracklist:
- “Elodie”
- “The Buffalo Days”
- “The Ghost That Sleeps In Me”
- “Until the Colours Run”
- “Green and Gold”
- “You Soon Learn”
- “Picture Soon”
- “Another Tale From Another English Town”
- “Our Cool Decay”
