Three easy ways to make me feel old: express surprise at my failure to download one single song in my whole life; remind me that I have two teenage children (though the fact I need to be reminded that I have children is worrying); tell me that Turin Brakes have just released their 10th album. Ten albums? It seems like only two months ago, on the recommendation of my mate Tim, I was listening to ‘The Door’ in my first year at uni. The new album’s title, Spacehopper, indicates that I’m not the only one taking a trip back to the past. Perhaps it’s a sign of how difficult it is to be an optimist these days. Perhaps, as Mark Fisher once wrote, “the physical landscapes of advanced capitalism are now littered with stalled and abandoned futures.”
But that’s all a bit heavy, so let’s clamber onto our spacehoppers, switch on our Discmans, and listen to the new Turin Brakes album while marvelling at our own ability to multi-task. First track and first single ‘The Message’ is a DeLorean time machine, with its ascending melody and double-tracked vocals, plinky, shimmering backdrop on the bridge, and lyrics like “Flying on a bike / 17 years old / Fascinating static on the FM radio / Tuning into something big / Pulling up an aerial.” It takes us back to a time when ‘google’ was a five-year-old’s mis-spelling of a singular close-fitting eye protector to be worn when swimming. Back to a time when we groaned at our dad’s jokes. Second track ‘Pays to be Paranoid’ lurches us back into the present. The line “We’re Facebook friends / But we never seem to be around” might even be a bit too on the nose. Title track ‘Spacehopper’ is a breezy head bopper with judicious flourishes of violin.
‘Almost’ is a song for ‘all the bands that didn’t quite make it’. “We could have been contenders…A waterfall of nearlies,” Olly Knights sings on their behalf. A welcome consolation to be filed next to George Bernard Shaw’s maxim: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, write music reviews.” The verses on ‘Lullaby’ are shuffling and dark à la Folk Implosion and the chorus has a faint echo of ‘Pain Killer (Summer Rain)’ from the Brakes’ second album Ether Song. ‘Today’ appears to have been a dare to see how many parts of Beck’s Sea Change can be incorporated into one song. The melody is certainly extremely similar to ‘Guess I’m Doing Fine’, though this is all fine, I guess – inspiration is a form of nostalgia. The “oh ohs” and “we can be diamonds” on ‘Horizon’ are the anthemic old Coldplay that we all know and pretend to hate. Said song also needs to be repeated in order to savour Gale Paridjanian’s solo.
‘Old Habits’ cleverly weaves in almost the entire opening melody from ‘Feeling Oblivion’ from the band’s debut. Just after the introduction of a theremin, ‘Silence and Sirens’ becomes a chugging, chiming, expansive aural vista that is the stock and trade of Doves. In Olly’s words, ‘Lazy Bones’ is “about extraterrestrials discovering the old bones of humanity.” It’s a great concept that could have been developed beyond a two-minute strum. As if to make up for the brevity of the preceding track, ‘What’s Underneath’ is six and a half minutes long, and could be described as chilled out Ocean Colour Scene.
Back in 2001, Turin Brakes were bracketed in the so-called ‘Quiet Is The New Loud Acoustic Movement’, and deservedly so – two blokes + acoustic guitars = the English Kings of Convenience. In 2025, Turin Brakes are a four-piece, and with that fact comes an increase in volume and more ideas. Maybe album #11 will look forwards instead of backwards? It’s what Mark Fisher would have wanted.
Spacehopper is out now on Cooking Vinyl
