Still, however nightmarish the notion of spending time in flooded fissures barely wide enough to fit through may be, one can’t help but wish that in its presentation, “The Rescue” shared a little more of that eccentric, intrepid spirit. It is involving and moving and certain to prove at least as big a hit as the co-directors’ last doc, “Free Solo.” Indeed, that mountaineering thrill ride shares DNA with “The Rescue” in that whether from a great height or within a tight, waterlogged crawl space, both movies detail the psychology of men pursuing extreme sporting pastimes that are, as one of the divers here admits, a phobic’s idea of hell. Instead, this National Geographic film is an accessible tale of disparate nations and individuals uniting behind a common, noble goal. This is the lure of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “The Rescue,” a documentary recounting the 2018 Thailand cave rescue, though the film delivers best on a slightly different remit, pulling a straightforwardly gripping, rousing, triumph-against-the-odds narrative out of that narrow ancient chasm, without ever really spelunking into its more intriguing recesses. God bless The Horrors for saving 2009.It may be a side-effect of a world that seems thoroughly explored, but in our well-mapped topside lives, drenched in Wi-Fi and familiarity, the plight of miners, submariners or young soccer players trapped below the surface of the earth exerts an uncanny pull on the global imagination. The Horrors have proved beyond all doubt that musical perfection is not unattainable and its not often that I see a band that truly blows my mind. Unlike many of their worthless contemporaries (I will personally firebomb any idiot who dares to mention White Lies) The Horrors have succeeded in transporting us all the way back to the late seventies and are bringing to bear a jaw-dropping, phenomenal dosage of post-punk. It seemed like a slightly odd but intriguing decision to work with video director Chris Cunningham and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as producers on Primary Colours, but the experiment has paid dividends.
I can see why they confined their debut material to the encore as it wouldn’t have sat well with the level of sophistication displayed in the rest of their set. They receive rapturous applause when they embark on an encore that consists of the perfect punk-goth-pop of Count In Fives, Sheena Is A Parasite and, my personal favourite, Gloves. The synths are ghostly and minimal, very Cure-like, and build up to a densely packed, thunderous storm of sound. The colossal Sea Within A Sea is the standout number tonight, with its prolonged rise-and-fall structure crashing over the crowd like a huge tidal wave. I Can’t Control Myself, with its industrial rhythmic intricacy, brings to mind the acerbic punk rock of Nine Inch Nails. God bless The Horrors for saving 2009.”Īll of their set is composed of choice cuts from their second album Primary Colours, but I’m nowhere near as disappointed as I’d expected to be at the apparent neglect of their debut. “The Horrors have succeeded in transporting us all the way back to the late seventies and are bringing to bear a jaw-dropping, phenomenal dosage of post-punk….(They) proved beyond all doubt that musical perfection is not unattainable and its not often that I see a band that truly blows my mind. This is the type of sound that can fill stadiums, but it’s been packed into a medium sized venue. It’s loud, brilliant & shrouded in a magical finesse. Spider (Rhys) Webb has swapped synths for Tomethy Furse’s bass duties and the results are sublime. Searing guitars puncture the airwaves, alternating with Faris Badwan’s claustrophobic, brooding Ian Curtis-esque vocal. Their awesomeness strikes you immediately – they look flawless and sound immense. It really was that good!Īfter five minutes of distortion clogging the speakers, The Horrors finally stride onto the stage, opening with Mirror’s Image. But seeing The Horrors tonight is what it must have been like to witness a monumental set from seminal post-punksters Joy Division in 1979. I’d always maintained that there were shards of glittering genius in their debut album and that they were technically very gifted. Gone now is the excessively large and – some might have said – mental hair, but any attempt to sum up how far The Horrors have advanced musically in these two years is totally beyond my ability. Back then, even though they’d sold out Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms like tonight, large sectors of the music press still regarded them with distaste, mainly because their hair was excessively large and faces overly made up in a neo-Goth stylee.
For me, the roots of NG Magazine will always start with The Horrors, being the first act we covered at the end of March 2007. Things evolve, people change, even wars can start and end. Live Review: The Horrors, Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 3 December 2009Ī lot can happen in two years.
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