By Ryan Pilot
Glow-in-the dark indie mystics Klaxons are back after three years in outer space to enlighten us with their latest audial offering.
New single ‘Flashover’ screeches and scrapes into life as a thickly layered industrial pounding, with sparse guitars warning of approaching peril. The rolling drums and clean guitars have something of The Arctic Monkeys’ latest work while the keys rise to bring the sound of the Horrors into the mix.
The single sounds like an indie version of War of the Worlds as singer Jamie Reynolds reports “Myriads of signals” that “have been noticed on the drifts,” and speaks of a flash “from our new neighbour,” over Cooper Temple Clause-inspired electro-indie beats.
So far so good, it’s urgent and exciting. Then from nowhere comes some piano plonking straight out of Bohemian Rhapsody. Over this West End interlude Reynolds warns, in a voice not too far from Jason Donovan’s Joseph on Lloyd-Webber’s ‘Close Every Door to Me,’ that “dimensions of time have come undone, now we have become so un-alone.”
It’s either a flash of humour or the band taking themselves too seriously as inter-galactic prophets. The problem with the Klaxons is that you can never tell if they’re taking the piss.
All-in-all the pioneers of “Nu-Rave” have created a dramatic, glorious noise underpinned by driving beats. Flashover remains catchy and delivers the mystical warnings that we love them for. Though you can’t help wondering if the real warning is that the world’s first indie-rock opera is on the horizon.
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