When The Horrors arrived on music shelves in 2006 with their self-titled debut EP, they were met with tremendous backlash from the British music press for being more of a “fashionable” flavor of the week – and these thoughts were more than justified. A group of early 20’s kids from Southend-on-Sea with ridiculous goth haircuts, gangly and dressed all in black – they seemed to the definition of what was going wrong in the tabloid-driven world of English indie music. And that EP – it had maybe one good song, ‘Sheena Is A Parasite’. To me that song – a blast of pure garage goth rock with a video by the fantastic director Chris Cunningham – was a planted seed. At least I had hoped so. Their debut album early the next year (Strange House) left much to be desired, but still left this feeling that there was potential for maybe not greatness necessarily, but something grand on the horizon. Their second album Primary Colours came out and it seemed to be that potential of success coming to life – and indeed it was great – but was it just in comparison to their prior releases that made it seemed to be the one everyone was hoping for? Once this new album, Skying, came out this fall, that definitely seemed to be the case. The band went big on this one. Not just in sound, but in concept. It’s a giant record, full of the oceans and clouds of guitar that the album artwork conveys, but there are high levels of glam in some songs (sometimes evoking David Bowie, and other times Duran Duran), spots of groove-filled baggy/Madchester-level Stone Roses/Charlatans sounds in others (that’s a mouth full innit?), bits of Public Image Ltd/My Bloody Valentine mash-ups, and spots of just pure ghostliness courtesy of vocalist Faris Badwan’s displaced echo-y vocals. This album was a bit off-putting for me on first listen, possibly even the second, third and fourth times, but with patience it snuck up on me at one point and its beauty became apparent. It’s still a pop album when you strip it down to it’s basics, but it’s all about the stroke of the paintbrush. The small moments of completely luxurious sounds amongst the waves of noise, the frightening lyrics (“When you wake up, when you wake up …. you will find me”), the way they take so many familiar genres of indie rock from the 1980’s – it all comes together and somehow make it their own – somehow carving their own identity. They are inspired, not replicating. It’s the closest thing to a British art rock album that I’ve heard in a long time – without all the pretense they were so accused of from their inception five years prior. I think Q Magazine said it best – “This isn’t blissed-out dream-pop but a beautiful Twin Peaks-style nightmare.”