The Horrors: Primary Colours (2LP) [XL RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set comes with a fold-up poster and a download coupon. Primary Colours was shortlisted for the 2009 Mercury Prize, and Metacritic logged universal critical acclaim.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Poster included
• Download card included

About the album

The Horrors arrived with spiky hair and garage punk, so the album that followed caught plenty of people off guard. Signed to XL, the London band headed to Bath in the summer of 2008 to work with Portishead's Geoff Barrow, Craig Silvey and music video director Chris Cunningham.

Rhys Webb and Tom Cowan swapped instruments for these sessions, and the sound swapped too: krautrock motorik, shoegaze haze and post-punk drama all pile in. "Mirror's Image" opens in a swirl, "Three Decades" and "Who Can Say" charge ahead, "Scarlet Fields" glows, and the eight-minute "Sea Within a Sea" builds into a pulsing synth finale, its video directed by Douglas Hart. Cunningham produced "Three Decades" and the title track, and "I Can't Control Myself" stretches out into a long, aching drone that sounds wonderful through a good pair of speakers.

It went to No. 25 in the UK and earned a silver award from the independent labels' association for 30,000 European sales. A band that started out loud and spiky grew, in a single record, into one with a seriously lovely sense of colour; the title, in hindsight, was fair warning.

Also at Kops: more The Horrors on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On XL Recordings (cat# XLLP 418), the 2009 album.