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Mar 28, 2019 Web Exclusive By Haydon Spenceley

A lot of people don’t know what to make of These New Puritans. The trajectory of their career has seen them become ever more “experimental,” something of a dirty word in contemporary musical parlance. However, those who have stuck with the band have been richly rewarded over the last few years, with the fantastic Field of Reeds (2013) followed up by the majestically expansive live rendition, 2014’s Expanded (Live at the Barbican). Those two releases found brothers George and Jack Barnett at what seemed like it must be the peak of their compositional and artistic powers, melding expansive and unsettling orchestral flourishes to “pop” songs which were of a far from standard form but still contained the necessary x-factor of being memorable and endlessly re-listenable. Each time you did re-listen, it seemed like there were more layers and nuances to discover.

And so we come to the release of Inside the Rose, the first studio album from the band six years. The mark of the band is that when pressing play for the first time, the listener really can’t be certain what kind of music is going to come out of the speakers. That is all too rare.

We need not worry. This is a taut, tight and testing collection of songs, which seems an entirely natural progression. These New Puritans are the only band on the planet that could create an album like this, build a discography like this. With titles like “Infinity Vibraphones,” “Where the Trees Are On Fire,” and “Beyond Black Suns,” it is only right that the album feels claustrophobic, almost deadened in places, but with the title track and the fantastic closer “Six” we are shown glimpses of an even more wildly creative future for this amazing band. As the music world mourns the death of Mark Hollis, there is only one band that can come close to carrying the mantle of Talk Talk and his solo work. These New Puritans are that band. Do not miss this album. (www.thesenewpuritans.com)

Author rating: 8/10