Cinematic Sounds and Folk-like Morals
Until the Colours Run is highly imaginative and shockingly lullaby-ic. Picture if Mazzy Star covered Imagine Dragons without anti-depressants, we would have this Lanterns on the Lake album.
Written around the economic and personal down trodden lives of current times, Lanterns on the Lake have a connection with the barely surviving economic generation. Being as socially/politically charged as they are, it’s not surprising that they write many of their songs about personal suffering.
The five-piece from England has had a turbulent beginning; it was almost as such Until the Colours Run was almost not produced. Two band members (Adam and Brendan Sykes) quit after their first release Gracious Tide, Take Me Home. The loss of the brothers forced the band to reissue a new sound. Not only did they lose most of the voice of the lyrics, they also lost the original bottom line component to their rhythm element. This type of change can be fatal to any band’s reputation.
But, you got to be into a band that produces songs like Lanterns on the Lake does.
“Elodie” is a numbing, electric introduction to the album. A gradual tuning to a harmonic song was the way this band introduces their new music, their new essence. From opening to closing lines, “The Buffalo Days” is the darkest of the album, lyrically speaking. “When this started / I was living like an animal / And I didn’t have a hope in hell” from first to last. This line hits hard. “The Ghosts that Sleeps Inside Me” is sad. It’s just an emotional wreck.
“Until the Colours Run,” their title track and their promotional push, is very beautiful and gleaming in sorrowful delight. If you listen carefully you can hear the vacancy in the room where they recorded at the end of “Green and Gold”; there is the subtle and sad “tump” of the piano creaking in the last two seconds. “Our Cool Decay” is a marathon ending to a hard day, actually quite pleasant and a fitting to the end to a cruel journey.
Even with elements of light and air, Until the Colours Run remains emotionally heavy. With cinematic sounds and folk-like morals included in their songs, Lanterns On The Lake has mxdwn’s thumbs up for dramatic storytelling.
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