aaamusic | On 21, May 2012

To have a sense of scale in pop music means that everything, including the appreciation of the music, is amplified. To illustrate, one must only look at the last two Muse albums. Black Holes and Revelations is considered to be their masterpiece, one of the reasons why is because it’s chuffing mahoosive in every way, shape or form, from lyrical themes to riffs. The follow up to it, The Resistance, is derided as their worst because, you guessed it, it’s even bigger, without enough good ideas to justify it’s hugeness. By having a similar taste for the spectacular Exitmusic are playing with fire on this, their debut album, and while it’s admirable in and of itself to take such a gamble, whether they’ll pull it off is a much bigger question. One that, I’m pleased to report, can be answered with an unequivocal yes. Passage is one hell of a listen, trading in the tired tropes usally associated with boy-girl indie rock duos (uptempo, poppy, “Quirky) for songs apocalyptic in scale and in sound that may not make for the most comforting or pleasant listen, but nevertheless are absolutely essential to those intrigued by the dark side of pop music.

In fact the album seems to me to be what Glasvegas’ second album should have been, dark, huge and indebted to The Jesus and Mary Chain because that’s what came naturally, rather than because the band feel it should be taken seriously. As a result the scale heard on record works and doesn’t feel big for the sake of it, letting the songs speak for themselves, and what songs they are. The titular opening is a master-class in how to build a song up from the merest of beginnings, tip-toeing in on broken piano chords before reaching a stadium sized climax of operatic vocals, precise guitars and frantic drums. Storms wraps that same kind of Sturm und Drang over a melodic and subtle song, Vocalist Aleksa Palladino wrenching every ounce of drama out of it that she can. The Modern Age provides what could be the finest moment of the record, the most outright melodic of the lot at least, with guitars more to the fore than ever on the record.

There may be a grain of truth to the accusations of sameyness, but there’s too many unequivocally good things about this record to care, and anyhow, most who are familiar with this kind of music in the first place would say that the band knows what they can do so well that, on their debut album of all things, they can make something that sounds like them and only them. That’s my take on it and it’ll hopefully yours if you take the time to truly discover this seductive, mysterious, seriously good album.

★★★★★

Will Howard