This is The Czars’ follow-up to last years ‘Before…But Longer’. It’s as good as you can get without fully amplifying your guitars. “Listen to it again…” was the gentle advice given to me one day several years ago. I did. It was good. The first listen gave me the impression that this was a band that was really quite boring. In actual fact, they are a band that unfolds a love story into your arms.

Singer John Grant sings with a certain melancholy that you have only ever felt before. ‘Drug’ and ‘Lullaby 6000’ are both sheer beauty on a plastic disc. They seem to drone at first and then envelope you with swathes of gorgeous love and pain. Then as you reach the ever so slightly more urgent tracks such as ‘This’, nothing seems as out of place as it so often has to with lesser bands. Could making this record be as effortless as it seems? Almost definitely. The last track ‘Catherine’ is a country song. This genre is often looked down upon and, I say, rightly so. It is a style that made a seemingly touching song transform into, what can only be described as, a joke.

Velvety vocals, sung with tenderly picked guitars and gently played piano occasionally accompanied by some harsh brass made this record. It will, of course, be criminally overlooked by, what is comfortably known as, everyone; but maybe this will be the gem that is unearthed. This is why Music is too rarely called Art. This is why Musicians can still be known as Artists.

Standout Tracks
drug
lullaby 6000
what used to be a human