WHILE this album might lack the widescreen scope of Dear Science, the stunning last album from TVOTR, there is still plenty here to astonish.
Where its predecessor was a masterpiece of agitation and musical cross-fertilisation, Nine Types Of Light is a simpler, more blissed-out affair, a collection of what are mostly love songs with hints of Talking Heads and Prince, yet still sounding demandingly different, as is their way.
Opener Second Song elides country with funk, and bursts into the brain like a cosmic headache. Keep Your Heart, the track that follows, is more or less a straightforward love song – “With all the world falling apart?/I’m gonna keep your heart” – that somehow still sounds new and remarkable, as too does the heartfelt Will Do. New Cannonball Blues is the Prince moment, while final track Caffeinated Consciousness is suitably head-befuddling. As always, the vocals are spot on, with Tunde Abebimpe sounding deeply, oddly wonderful.
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