Album Review: Night Works - Urban Heat Island
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
One of those albums sure to bring unwanted nostalgia to mind for people who were a certain age in the Eighties and yet for those of a younger disposition (& who've therefore had the rubbish from that decade filtered out) this will be an enjoyable continuation of a sound they love.
Contradicting that opening statement somewhat, however, 'Nathanial' (track number four) bears such a pleasing resemblance to Prefab Sprout that the haters will begin to thaw out.
Night Works is the brainchild of one time on-stage Metronomy member Gabriel Stebbings (also late of Your Twenties) and Urban Heat Island certainly shares some roots with the former group. The overall sound of the band is less naive though. Opener 'Boys Born In Confident Times' lends weight to that Eighties mention but it's got a pleasingly dark undertone when it hints in the chorus that the familial confidence of the times may not be the protection from the real world that was assumed.
'Lifeline' actually sounds a bit like Young Knives, albeit not at the pace they'd deliver the work and necessarily poppier, with it's jagged instrumental parts but especially the vocals. No two songs here sound alike and that's a key element of what makes the whole work such a fun and satisfying listen. 'Armajaro' is a bit jazz-funk by the time it gets to its halfway point but just as you get used to that some really fat techno bass makes the scene before that too is overtaken by an almost stadium rock closing phase. Ambitious stuff in only three and a half minutes.
Track number seven, 'The Eveningtime', benefits from an early demonstrative dissonance on the drums that contrasts well with the subject matter being dealt with by the lyrics, making the song a sort of less celebratory cousin of Duran Duran's 'Rio'. 'Share The Weather' is maybe the album's weakest song, seemingly being an irony-free account of flying to Chamonix for a bit of skiing and encountering some turbulence on the way. At close to seven minutes it somewhat overstays its welcome.
The best though is still to come. Penultimate song 'Long Forgotten Boy', after a misleading first minute, becomes as uplifting and summery sounding sonag as you could want at this time of year when that season still seems rather far off in the UK. It's practically perfect but you'll still feel it's ended too soon so it's possibly no bad thing that Erol Alkan has reworked it to nearly double the length. Closer 'Arp' is a curious, rather bare affair that probably wouldn't have worked anywhere else on the album but at the end, if "worked" is even the right word. Not that it makes for a sour ending to an otherwise very enjoyable album, it's just not really in keeping with what you've come to expect by that point.
Urban Heat Island is out now and available from amazon