Cards on the table time: The Rapture’s Echoes is a better album than Is This It. Oooooh, can you feel that? That’s the breeze from a million fringes as they’re flicked in outrage. But nuts to you all; it’s more unique, it’s got more personality and energy, and boasts three of the greatest indie dancefloor fillers of the decade.
Though this initially seems like an arbitrary comparison – the two albums don’t really sound anything alike – both The Rapture and The Strokes belong to an exclusive group of New York bands (along with Interpol, The Walkmen and.. Hot Hot Heat?) who exploded onto the scene around the turn of the century with outstanding, zeitgeist-seizing records that both critics and fans immediately stored in a special place next to their hearts, before preparing to be slightly more disappointed with each subsequent release.
Everyone’s path has been a little different: The Strokes declined sharply before pulling it back (a bit) with this year’s Angles; Interpol have steadily descended into irrelevance, with last year’s self-titled effort giving the impression that they really just want out already; The Walkmen drifted in the abyss for a while but are, arguably, the winners of all this, having recently put out two of the great overlooked records of the last few years; and Hot Hot Heat stepped on a landmine some time around 2007.
The Rapture have taken things a little more slowly (yeah, even slower than The Strokes), with 2006 sophomore album Pieces of the People We Love coming a full three years after Echoes and representing a slight, but hardly worrisome decline in quality. Unfortunately, unless you produce a follow-up at superhuman speed (stand up, Arctic Monkeys) then each subsequent album you put out will be hailed as your ‘comeback record’, and dogged by all the pressure that comes with that kind of press. Christ, even Adele’s 21 was considered a comeback by most.
In The Grace of Your Love is a little different. Coming five years after Pieces of the People We Love failed to set the world alight, it really does qualify as a potential comeback, and has a bloody good go at it. The production value has taken a significant jump, Luke Jenner’s vocals are now pretty much entirely sung rather than yelped, and as a band The Rapture sound tighter than ever. Do they pull it off? Well.. kind of.
The best tracks draw heavily from the sound of disco – a more omnipresent chart staple now than it has been in years thanks to the success of one Miss Stefani Germanotta – and 90’s house. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in lead single ‘How Deep is Your Love’, featuring both handclap percussion AND a piano chord riff. It builds gradually, keeping the energy up before dropping into the ultimate ‘here it comes..’ breakdown and erupting into an all-consuming, floor-destroying monster. It’s breathtaking, and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the still-peerless ‘House of Jealous Lovers’.
There’s more. ‘Never Die Again’ is almost as perfect as a disco homage, piling on horns and chant along vocals and keeping the mood up higher and longer than it has any right to. ‘Blue Bird’ and ‘Children’ both kick off with a euphoric bombast that they somehow maintain. The formula doesn’t always gel, however: ‘Sail Away’ makes nice use of power chords but outstays its welcome, and the bass heavy, accordion sampling ‘Come Back to Me’ struggles to do anything with its hook before ditching it entirely three minutes in for something more subdued, moody and boring.
Unfortunately the blanks in between the stand outs are mostly tracks that sound so similar to every other DFA release that there’s a chance they were simply mis-allocated from other people’s albums. The title track is the best of these, with nice vocal and key hooks and a sinewy bassline, but it pushes its luck long before its five and a half minute run time is up; too many woah’s, guys. On an album which has elsewhere nailed the art of the euphoric build, it’s bizarre to find turgid misfires like ‘Miss You’, which starts nicely enough but fails to develop and totally loses it during its dog of a chorus. It doesn’t help that it’s immediately followed by the glorious opening seconds of ‘Blue Bird’.
The two tracks that deviate from the ‘DFA or Disco’ format make these misfires even more glaring. Appearing towards the end of In the Grace of Your Love’s significantly stronger second side, ‘Can You Find A Way’ could have been the comeback single Klaxons’ Surfing the Void so desperately needed, all urgent vocals and urgent, jagged chords. Even better is closer ‘It Takes Time To Be A Man’, a languid, piano-led swooner which’ll be rattling around your head for days.
So, In the Grace of Your Love is another, very slightly, diminished return, but is good enough on its own terms to qualify as a highly respectable release and will save The Rapture from the kind of negative backlash the likes of First Impressions of Earth inspire. It doesn’t do well when held up to Echoes, but little does, and we should be grateful that they managed to catch lightning in a bottle even once.
[Rating:3.5]
The Rapture – In The Grace Of Your Love / White Out Live! from DFA Records on Vimeo.
