Sons of Raphael - Full-Throated Messianic Homage

To say Sons of Raphael’s debut album has been a wait would be an understatement. The London duo reached their still-buzziest back in mid-2018, amid what felt like a concentrated effort to create rock lore around them with scant regard for such frivolities as facts - and little success. Titling this eventual release ‘Full-Throated Messianic Homage’ doesn’t seem to suggest much has changed in the interim: just why would anyone care if its delay was indeed due to a lost basketball game? Still, what the record does well is create a mood - one would imagine most of Ronnel and Loral Raphael’s literature to have been born of the Age of Aquarius, such is its indebtedness to meandering ’70s psych. What it’s less adept at is giving us anything memorable; a song; even something to feel. Imagine, if you will, the stubbornly contrary incarnation of MGMT a decade back, cryogenically reincarnated (just without the ability to write a hook) and you’re halfway there.