The Horrors – Night Life Review

An album like Nightlife lingers on the mind not because of better days as juxtaposition, but fundamentals found in both. There is a night life experience for all of us, be it a late-night drive, an overnight shift or just a sleepless evening. Compartmentalise those thoughts, the feelings of the time, and accept a new context from Nightlife. The Horrors and their longstanding scope for garage rock, are safe hands. A brief but grim squelching noise opens Nightlife, the glitchy and foreboding sound it creates builds and builds. Deep tones, deeper messages and, ultimately, a route through the darkness. Nightlife uses those shadows, the darker alleys and late-night thoughts, but manages to upturn those expected commentaries. Instead, it focuses on the intimacy, the abandon which comes in the thrills of the dark. Nightlife does well in adapting this, but it is all the stronger for the daring instrumental choices made throughout.  

Opener Ariel hangs onto the slower tempo of dark intensity, but soon the percussion appears, backing not frontman Faris Badwan but the moody instrumentals. The Horrors are intent on changing their image. They have abandoned what they came from and headed straight into the heart of dark art rock. Nightlife is a welcome change; a triumph of instrumental risk and lyrical assessments of post-lockdown are hit on well. In the night is fear, but consistency, a safety of its own to those who are living their waking hours through the late night. Nightlife is more than just the club scene or the slow groan of an overnight shift, it toys with the fears our mind conjures for the shadows, where nothing may lay. But for the wilder imagination, the implication of an encounter is worse than the encounter itself. As much can be heard on the beat and thrill of Silent Sister, a song that is anything but with its industrial sound taking centre stage.  

Pain and intimacy are a cycle, according to The Silence That Remains. A powerful track, a song where the suggestive writing is lost, in its place a bluntness which matches the adrenalin-pumping instrumental work. Roaring guitar work, the sort of sound you would expect where unnerving a listener is the main aim. The Horrors succeed in creating a soundscape befitting of their name, but remember to keep a beauty at the centre, a chance to reflect on the post-Britpop fallout which came through This is Hardcore and 13. Nightlife is of a different era but the hangups of a decade, the lost hours adding up to weeks, taking their toll throughout this brilliant piece from The Horrors. It is not just moaning horrors and depressive episodes; Nightlife strives for instrumental excellence and hits it time and again. Trial by Fire is a monumental experience, as is the shimmering, beat-reliant style of Lotus Eater.  

Enlightening momentum is what guides The Horrors through Nightlife. It is an album of strange and often chilling intensity. Either lapse into it and welcome the waves of darker sound, breaking soon after they settle for a lighter flourish on closer LA Runaway, or listen in fear and awe. Nightlife is a blast of brilliant instrumental work but take note of those lyrical flourishes. It is a perfect package in that way, a fine blur of what can be done with quality songwriting and instrumentals which not only challenge the core concept but push against the standards and norms of the times. Nightlife is a brilliant achievement, an album which underscores the necessity for a band with longevity on their side to create outside the expected outline.