Artist: Light Parades
Title: Through All Times
Genre: Alternative Pop
Release: 25th March 2013
Label: Rainbow Box Music
Review Flash
A bit of shrouded pathos, a bit of enjoyable acoustic containment, a slight case of bitter-sweet sadness that hangs from the willow branches (similar to the low-saturated sonic landscapes of THE NATIONAL), swarms of lovely melodies, changing directions among guitars and piano, and the vocals of Daniel Hopkinson, tightrope walking between wistfulness, nostalgia and vulnerability… these are the primary colours the English quartet is filling their paintings with... and unfortunately that´s the sharp-edged rock, blocking the rivers gentle and actual pleasing flow too. It´s a really soothing and comfortably lulling listening, but where the above mentioned THE NATIONAL retorts the sticky vapours with irony and glittering sarcasm, the LIGHT PARADES takes their self-created bleakness too serious for being able to save it from stumbling into tempered kind of kitsch. The overall mood is bit too weepy and too viscously for not mouthing into a bundle of equally coloured, tissue-wrapped ballads by and by. Really a pity, that this time the land was so free of rapids.
Conclusion: ‘Through All Times’ starts as a really well-done atmospheric collection of sweetly sentimental and melancholic songs, but fails to offer any variations of mood and direction, so that it easily becomes too sloppy and stickily leaden after a handful of songs. Very sad (of course!)
Rating: 6 / 10
