Last Christmas, perhaps in the spirit of the season, the good men of Hey Colossus announced they had a new album arriving in the new year. Rejoice! And so on. I gotta say, it feels like that was maybe about a year ago or something. The dependably grim weeks of January and February have stretched time into a thin grey misery paste. It’s another month yet until the clocks go forward but, finally, Heaven Was Wild arrives to help shake that winter lethargy. Loud, loose, and thrillingly alive, it’s a much needed reminder that not everything is soul-suckingly terrible.
Not to harp on about the weird drag of days but it’s apparently only two and half years since their last album, In Blood, and that really feels a very long time ago indeed. If that record saw them more considered and polished than previous this new one is a little step back into the garage. As revealed in a short film accompanying its announcement these songs were road tested on a four gig weekend in London last year and recorded on another weekend shortly after, the whole band in the studio together. The urgency of the music channels the pace of it’s creation. It comes at you pretty fast.
Recent trailer for the album ‘Clocks’ is a Colossus banger, its steady locomotion intensifying with a manic glee, guest vocals from Clare Adams (Objections, Nape Neck) bouncing off Paul Sykes’ to great effect. The next track ‘Death and Deliverance’ is another ripper, pushing on the accelerator a little harder if anything, tearing along, unswerving. It’s not until we’re about half way with ‘Runaway Heart’ that things ease up and open out a little. It also has a curiously haunted coda, a longer version of the small clips that bookend the songs here to close out the first side.
Similarly ‘People You Long To Forget’ opens the second side with what sounds like a rough demo version before coming into full focus. This is perhaps a telling detail, in case the story of the album’s birth in short, intense, bursts suggests a lo-fi, ragged, blast. There’s no noise indulgence here, the recordings are sharp and the songs tightly arranged, still carrying their off kilter melodicism amid a tangible sense of excitement at playing music together. The longer you listen the more detail is revealed, and the songs seem closer to its predecessor than on first impression, swapping out In Blood‘s smoother surfaces and often furrowed brow for wild energy and rock ‘n’ roll fun.
