HIGH FIVES AT LAST
After being hated by crowds when they first started out, The Horrors are celebrating success as they release their fifth album V
THE Horrors have gone from having bottles thrown at them to being showered in critical adulation. In 2007, while they were on tour with Arctic Monkeys, the garage rockers felt the crowds’ hatred. A decade on, they released their fifth album V this week to across-the-board acclaim, after supporting Depeche Mode earlier this year. Guitarist Joshua Hayward admitted: “It’s weird, isn’t it? “We’ve just been playing to mega-domes and a friend said to me, ‘It’s a far cry from having seatbelts thrown at you, supporting the Arctic Monkeys.’” Seatbelts? “Yeah,” he confirmed. “People used to throw all kinds of s*** at us.” Frontman Faris Badwan is just as surprised by how things have changed. Talking about the band’s recent stadium shows as special guests of fellow Essex boys Depeche Mode, he admitted: “I’d never really thought of us as a band who could play in stadiums. “We definitely never thought that when we formed the band. But it worked in that environment, and it’s probably the most I’ve enjoyed a stretch of live dates.”
It helps that The Horrors’ sound has changed.
Back in 2007, with the release of debut Strange House, their dark beanpole look had them pigeon-holed as Goths.
But the group, who also include keyboard player Tom Cowan, bassist Rhys Webb and drummer Joe Spurgeon, never stood still musically.
Second album Primary Colours mixed the punchy garage rock of Who Can Say with the psychedelia of Sea Within a Sea. It reached No25 and was voted NME’s album of the year.
Third album Skying in 2011 did even better, reaching No5.
Its trippy psych-rock was consolidated with fourth album Luminous in 2014, which reached No6.
But with V they’ve tried, like with Primary Colours, to radically change their sound, adding an electronic, sometimes dance, edge to the darkness.
Badwan admitted the album, produced by Paul Epworth and released on his Wolf Tone label, is a risk, adding: “But life isn’t much fun without risk.
“It’s the antithesis of being creative if you know what you’re going to be doing every time.”
Cowan added: “We’ve always been conscious of bands who do stay in one place for years and years and that’s not very interesting. I like to be surprised.
“Bowie pre-empted the modern condition of not being able to stay in one place for very
long, and I get frustrated with bands who stay still, because then it does become a career. And it literally is ‘status quo’, in both senses.”
They concede Luminous was retreading old ground – but V is once again a call to arms.
V, of course, means five. But there’s also five in the band and V is for victory.
Badwan joked: “I thought the V was a ‘f*** you’.
“A bit of a ‘f*** you, we’re back’. Because when a band go away for two or three years, people often assume that they are done.”
While The Horrors usually self-produce their albums, this time they brought in the Grammy award-winning Epworth, who helmed Adele’s 21 and also produced the likes of Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars, U2 and The Stone Roses.
Webb said he was a “hard taskmaster”.
The band would bring in tracks but he’d want to do something new, starting with an electronic loop and building the songs like that.
His ear for a good song also saved one of the demos the band didn’t want, turning it into the single Something To Remember Me By.
Badwan said: “That was a demo that we’d basically chucked but Paul heard it and said, ‘That’s a single.’”
Opening track Hologram is, according to Webb, “a nod of the hat to Gary Numan”, while the album’s closer has the Balearic grove of New Order. Webb said: “Even though we started with this punky garage sound, there was always this real spirit of wanting to experiment and explore.” And V is their most experimental album to date. But the band assure fans that they’ve come up with the sound by chance and not design. Cowan said: “It’s definitely not a parody or a pastiche.” ● V is out now. The Horrors play QMU, Glasgow, on October 19.