Anavae - '45' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Afraid

2. Human

3. Skeleton

4. High

5. Shy Girls

6. Night

7. Not Enough

8. Never Want To Love Again

9. Hold On

10. Dirt

11. Smile

12. California

This is an incredibly assured debut album from this London based duo which may have invented a new genre I don't yet have a name for! Psychotic Rock? Electronic Rock and Pop Mania? Who cares, it’s brilliant and doesn’t need to be pigeonholed.

There is a darkness that rests at the heart of the album, how many songs have the singer expressing the desire to skin someone alive and wear their flesh in such a catchy way? It makes being psychotic sound like a great time! I could hear a room full of people singing along with this chorus as it’s just so damn catchy! It’s not the only potential single here, the whole album could work on any playlist but it’s so much better as a piece of work and deserves not to be broken down into a few songs on playlists.

I think a significant new talent have just announced their arrival, it’s not likely they will ever be playing the royal variety performance but personally that makes me like them even more!

The whole album is just so atmospheric yet has so many hooks that it has the capability to become the soundtrack to the collective mania the UK is suffering just now. There are riffs in this album that any number of Rock bands would kill for plus a top quality vocal performance.

The production is tremendous, there are just so many levels to what’s going on, at times it almost feels like the wall of sound has been resurrected.

It’s hard to describe this album, given the content of many of the songs you might expect me to reach for the word Gothic, it’s not, it’s so much more than that. It’s like the Sisters of Mercy met Portishead, decide to gang up on Evanescence and spliced all their genes together in a laboratory along with the Foo’s and Years and Years while a top quality Pop and Rock vocalist fronts it all up as a mad scientist controls the whole thing and waits for the lightening to strike.

The scientist doesn’t need to wait, lightening strikes again and again.

I totally love this album. Check your sanity, preconceptions and expectations at the door and give it a listen. You might find you can’t live without it.