Highlights: Dark Lights, Shine Loud, Greedy Little Heart, Cars
Not Leaving, All That I Have, Sermon On The Mount
There’s nothing easier
(or, for some, more natural) than accuse a young new artist of not being unique.
And it’s true that there’s nothing particularly original about Gabriel Bruce. Love In Arms is full of reference
points: there’s a little Nick Cave, a little Leonard Cohen, a little
Tindersticks along the way. And yet, despite all that, there’s not a second on
the whole album that lacks ambition or sounds in any way derivative.
It’s not a particularly
intricate album, but Gabriel Bruce knows what he’s doing, and he does it with
great authority. There’s a lot to go for here. The stomping “Honey Honey Honey”
is catchy, the slow “All That I Have” has a few brilliant lyrical lines of pain
and heartbreak, the penultimate “Perfect Weather” has an effective French horn
hook, etc. So much to love, and in the end I ended up enjoying every single
song here. I did at first think that the surprisingly lightweight “Zoe” was out
of place and should have been replaced by the beautiful acoustic non-album ballad
“Only One”, but then it has revealed itself as a charming little thing that
brings a certain diversity and helps you take a short breath before the
booming, suffocating and impassioned onslaught continues.
Granted, a record this
expressly emotional can get a little over the top on occasion. And it does,
particularly on the album’s Tom Waits-esque grand finale (almost overrides the
scope of “Come On Up To The House” or “Anywhere I Lay My Head”), “Sermon On The
Mount”, with its overpowering vocal delivery and crashing piano chords.
Thankfully, it all works – with flare. Might be a somewhat superficial thing to
say, but it works because it has great songs. I can get even deeper than that:
the songs are so good because they are carried by articulate tunes and
Gabriel’s charisma.
Love In Arms is not simply the year’s best debut so far, it is one
of the most inspired and impressive British debuts in recent memory. There’s a
powerful moment during “Sleep Paralysis”: about halfway through, completely out
of the blue, the instrumentation gets louder. Nothing else changes – it just
gets louder. And, quite miraculously, it works.
9/10
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