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May 08, 2014 MONEY By Tom Fenwick

MONEY‘s The Shadow of Heaven feels both epic in scope and poetic in tone, shunning expected notions of pop to deal with weighty concepts, spacious arrangements, and lyrical preoccupations with the wider concerns of humanity.

Vocalist Jamie Lee’s choirboy falsetto delivers lyrics that deal with mortality (“Who’s Going to Love You Now”), religion (“Cruelty of Godliness”), loneliness and lust (“Goodnight London”). From the mouths of less assured singers, this might feel pretentious, but it lands here with nothing less than devout conviction. Lee’s key talent lies in his ability to make grand pronouncements such as “It’s a shame that God is dead” on opener “So Long (God Is Dead)” or “Out in that big wide ocean/Kids are fucking in cars/Screaming in the chapels and the bars” on closer “Black” with a heartfelt honesty that never dips into winking pseudo-irony. It’s this same overarching sincerity that infuses the band’s sound: rich waves of music swaddling Lee’s impassioned vocals with a gentle touch; sweeping guitars and tentatively restrained percussion reverberating out to form wistful harmonies; ripples that create a vast sense of space with little more than a gentle touch.

Of course, it’s not a perfect record—the stronger tracks are weighted towards the first half of the LP, leaving the back end of the album’s pace to suffer—but remove these minor issues and what remains is an audacious and exquisite work of gloomy beauty that should see MONEY on a fast ascent, leaving grand sonic architecture in their wake. (www.bellaunion.com/artists/money)

Author rating: 8.5/10