Boston Manor - Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures

Boston Manor are unafraid. The Blackpool outfit took on a world devoid of gigs with last year’s experimental release ‘GLUE’. Now, out of nowhere, they’re taking on the world once again with ‘Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures’. From lead single ‘Carbon Mono’, rapturously received at their summer festival appearances, to every grinding bass note and Vantablack-dark vocal hook on the new tracks on show, ‘Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures’ is saturated with the very essence of the band. In keeping with the title, there is something deeply desperate at these songs’ core, churning and imploring: though the lyrics are outward-looking, ‘Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures’ maintains a feeling of gripping introspection, and a paralysing need to exorcise it. ‘Let The Right One In’ is almost a love song masquerading as barbed-wire heaviness, ‘Algorithm’’s dangerously biting lyrics deal with artistic identity in an industry governed by computer code, and ‘I Don’t Like People (And People Don’t Like Me)’ drills down through the mantra of the title through a gloomy musical backdrop to the very epicentre of existential loneliness. Through its sheer intensity, in both theme and sound, ‘Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures’ finds itself Boston Manor’s most assertive release yet.