On first listen, this album might be hard to understand, to listen to and to accept, its quite different from their previous albums, but its nonetheless a Bombay Bicycle Club album through and through. Its just an evolution, one that contains all the great parts that their previous albums imparted.
1: How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep; A great opening track with jangling guitars a little electronic beep and bop give this album a fresh driving beat accompanied by Suren de Saram's great drum beat, it really is a great song to wake up to and get moving.
2: Bad Timing: This starts out a little melancholy, kind of reminds me of the band Ultra in its structure. "with all your powers I am pushing back", the song sings of loss and the inability to stop it happening, slightly dour for the second track, but hey I like it dour, so another great track.
3: Your Eyes: Picks up the mood and offers a slightly more aggressive mood than the other songs so far, the great thing about this track are all the little instruments they use, here and there, just make it very interesting to pick through. I just love the way the song ends...
4: Lights Out, Words Gone: Ah man the beginning of this song is delicious, "my heart is breaking like you heard", great structure, reminds me a little of ska. I believe its Lucy Rose singing with them, great haunting song.
5: Take the Right One: Hits its stride straight away, very reminiscent of late 80's early nineties Seattle movement, but brought up to date.
6: Shuffle: Oh boy this song is just stupendous (sorry had to use that word) "You gave to me, All I know, I will stay here, I will not go" doesn't that say it all, Lucy Rose also sings on this song as well, its just an extremely uplifting song, and makes you want to bounce all over. "Once you get the feel of it, It wants you back for more"
7: Beggers: Possibly one of my favourite songs on the album, it starts soft album, folksy, but then shoves that aside for a driving forceful song, the drums, lyrics, bass are all wonderful "so carefully planned, each word you have spoken"
8: Leave It: "Dont you go leave me now, come see what you've done" A good song about leaving or being left, seems to be a theme across the album.
9: Fracture: Possibly my least favourite song, thats not to say its bad, just that each album has to have one :) Reminds me of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel
10: What You Want: I like the fact that by the 10th song on an album that is still good, great even, that's the magic of this album, "You tease this love", "watcha want, watcha want, anything you want" Seems to be an song of someone taking advantage of another, has a great melody, and awesome drum line, great use of song structure to bring the feeling of helplessness across.
11: Favorite Day: "strange dream" little fairies sing, well that's what it sounds like anyway. The song is interspersed with a baroque sounding piano. A really good penultimate song. "Don't stop, till you feel it all" Shouldn't everyone live their lives to that lyric.
12: Still: "Simple promises you said you'd never break, but now you have" A very haunting song, i'll leave you guys to see what its all about, but its something that stays with you for a long time, wonderful way to end a song. The piano sounded like the one U2 used on October, it makes you think of a cold autumn day just as winter is about to fall.
So in closing this entire album from start to finish is just a wonderful journey through life and its struggles but also its joys and loves. Thankfully its an album that simply gets better and better with every single listen.
"My lips they stay perfectly still"