No matter what some might say, the crowded pop landscape is a pretty exciting place to be at the moment. There are chart-conquering mainstays aplenty, just as there are countless pockets of online experimentation to investigate at will. Hurts want a slice of the action.
‘Surrender’ doesn’t quite find Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson at odds with the studied, detached cool of their early albums, but it is demonstrative in a manner that ‘Happiness’ and ‘Exile’ weren’t. There are concessions to the pop-house trend, plaster-shattering synths and chanted hooks, too, but the overall result is a sense of artifice.
‘Surrender’ has all of the moves down without really delivering a hit of substance. If the songs aren’t there, after all, all the rest is just window dressing.
Some Kind Of Heaven demonstrates both Hurts’ strengths and a few fresh weaknesses. It introduces some of the album’s dramatic themes - heaven and hell, redemption, celestial choirs, all conquering, destructive love - but wraps them in an insipid hook that collapses beneath the weight of expectation presented by a simple “You got me singing, baby…”.
It’s a formula that is repeated throughout. There is a brief deviation into Shakespeare on the location-hopping Rolling Stone, perhaps the song most content to revisit the sweeping nature of Hurts’ breakthrough release, but elsewhere the focus is on upping the tempo.
Why is a slavish follower of ‘80ssynth-pop standards but retains a semblance of goofy charm and Hutchcraft’s swagger, even if its central lyric is a desultory: “If this is love, then why does it hurt so bad?” Less fun is Nothing Will Be Bigger, which rests on club-ready keys and resembles the most single-minded of EDM tunes.
The back end of the record has a little more going for it. Lights is a slow-burn, Stevie Wonder-indebted funk song that, despite the misses that came before it, manages to twist something fresh from staid beginnings. Wish, the closing ballad, has enough about it for its cliches to come across as endearingly earnest rather than derivative.
Given the ambition that clearly propped up the decisions made on album three, ‘Surrender’ is a letdown. Hurts have embraced change, something that should always be applauded, but lost their way in the process.
Hurts Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu February 11 2016 - GLASGOW O2 Academy Glasgow
Fri February 12 2016 - MANCHESTER Academy
Sat February 13 2016 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
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