Currents Review

Let It Happen opens with eight minutes that include a deliberate digital stutter, a false ending and a key change, which is a statement of intent about a record that was going to leave the rock audience behind. The guitars are almost gone. What replaces them is a warm, round synthesiser bass and a drum sound with real bounce, and the mixing is the best thing about the album: everything is loud and nothing is crowded.

The Less I Know the Better is built on a bass line that has been in every bar in the world since, and it is a song about watching someone leave with somebody else. Eventually and New Person, Same Old Mistakes are honest in a way the earlier records were not, and Cause I'm a Man is the weakest lyric here by a distance, an excuse dressed as a confession. The whole thing is about a decision to change, which makes the change in sound feel earned rather than decorative.