Lonerism Review

The step from the debut is a step in ambition. Guitars recede, keyboards take over, and the arrangements start doing things that only make sense on a record: phasing that sweeps across the stereo field, drums that duck and return, tape stops, a fairground organ appearing from nowhere. Feels Like We Only Go Backwards is the peak, a chord loop that never resolves and a vocal melody that could have been written in 1967, and it is one of the finest pop songs of the decade.

Elephant is the loud one and it swaggers. Apocalypse Dreams builds and collapses twice in six minutes. The lyrics have improved, mostly because they are now about a specific discomfort, being in a crowd and wanting to leave, rather than about solitude in the abstract. Where it falls short of perfection is pacing: two or three tracks in the back half are texture rather than songs. Everything else is close to flawless and it still sounds enormous.