Fenech-Soler - Rituals

For an album called ‘Rituals’ that frequently mentions sunrise, the release date seems to have been planned somewhere quite far away from a calendar.

In short, Fenech-Soler’s second album is surely the summeriest album to hit record shops/iTunes/Spotify/whatever this September. From abstract noun album-opener ‘Youth’ to adjectival lead single ‘Magnetic’ and verby album-closer ‘Glow’, this is an LP wholly designed for the unthinking warm waves of sun, sea and synths. But, like mince pies in January, ‘Rituals’ is from start to finish an absolutely joyous piece of indulgent craft. It’s also the clearest declaration to date of the band’s dance-pop ambitions.

Also in evidence is the fact that a few dabblings in the world of remixing has paid off. Momentary Top 40 chart-style euphoria aside, ‘Rituals’ is an album whose slick production washes over you in restrained tides, as opposed to flash-floods. ‘Somebody’, for example, combines Ben Duffy’s airy vocals, some gentle bass frequencies and shimmery percussive loops to produce a series of hair-raising pull-and-release moments that thankfully never takes you to the increasingly commonplace drop. Instead, the album gently buffets you along on eddies of goodwill and enjoyment without ever seeming tedious or vacant.

If there’s an accusation to level at ‘Rituals’ it’s that they haven’t completely reinvented the wheel. Joyful synth-pop that declares “now that we’re here, we feel so alive, we can make this last forever, we can waste time together” is hardly going to win Nobel prizes for literature. But who cares?