The Xcerts - Learning How To Live And Let Go

From the cult-amassing 2009 debut ‘In The Cold Wind We Smile’ to 2018’s stadium-ready ‘Hold On To Your Heart’, The Xcerts have consistently demonstrated their ability to pen a perfect pop banger. As contemporaries have risen and fallen around them, their drive and work-ethic has powered on regardless with barely a blip in their catalogue. That their fifth studio album arrives following the longest break between records is telling. Pesky pandemic aside, the breathing space has kicked them up another notch, landing on a musical consistency that might have otherwise escaped them.

‘Learning How To Live And Let Go’ takes a small step back from the all-out pop of their previous record, and lands a stylistic throughline that the band were perhaps always destined to make. ‘GIMME’ launches the record with the unexpected ferocity that defined The 1975’s ‘People’. That band’s influence rings out on the immeasurably catchy ‘Lovesick’. It’s perhaps the one-plus minute ‘Inhale(her)’ that presents the trio at their most thrilling, a haunting melody uniquely drenched in scuzzy guitar. It’s dangerously tempting to ask whether ‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’ will be the moment that pushes The Xcerts to wider recognition. Regardless, this is a fully realised version of who and what they have always been.