Turin Brakes

One of pop music’s most haggard clichés is about ‘difficult’ second albums. For Turin Brakes, they have reached difficult fourth album time. On ‘Dark On Fire’, Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian eschew much of the plaintive, folky, lads-around-the-campfire guitar duelling of early Brakes albums for a broader, band-based approach. It works… a bit. You’d never pick up a Turin Brakes record expecting to be challenged by sonic and lyrical experimentation. But too often, ‘Dark On Fire’ ventures into the sort of bleeding heart emotion of Embrace and Ashcroft. On ‘Something In My Eye’, the minor chords are squeezed out like a car washer’s sponge; ‘Stalker’ finds Knights doing his best Danny McNamara impression. It comes as no surprise that when things are pared back to the bone, as on acoustic lullaby ‘Here Comes The Moon’, something of the old, more loveable Turin Brakes rears its head.

Stephen Worthy