Embrace

It’s been a long time since we’ve last seen Embrace; since fifth album ‘This New Day’ was released in approximately 1974 the Yorkshire band have been busy writing a new album that they wanted to ensure was their best yet.

You can’t knock a band for ambition but a lot changes over time; guitars have been marginally less popular than rabies for quite a while and insipid fireside ballads receive a worse press than most murderers do. Could it be that Embrace have failed to strike whilst the iron was still hot and have found themselves an irrelevance?

Loaded up with new material in their backpacks the Yorkshire five-piece are back on the road for some unusually intimate gigs. Having sold out in minutes it’s clear that people are still interested to hear what Embrace have to offer and the Lemon Tree is packed to the rafters.

Opening song ‘Protection’ is a shock to the system, New Order drum machines and synths feel totally alien to what you expect from Embrace and latest single ‘Refugees’ will appeal to the Temper Trap crowd with guitarist Richard McNamara taking lead vocals, his falsetto proving far stronger than that of regular singer Danny McNamara.

On that note, Danny McNamara’s vocals haven’t improved with age and neither has his patter (standard examples include “How are you feeling?” and “Have you had a nice day?”). His vocals are often staggeringly off-key. It’s like listening to a Dyson hoover that’s learned how to yodel, or if someone had won a competition to front a famous band for the evening, but mistakenly thought it was Coldplay.

Oldies such as ‘My Weakness Is None Of Your Business’ and ‘Nature’s Law’ are still entertaining to run through, but on a couple of occasions the new material falls into middle of the road territory, ‘I Run’ being particularly stodgy and shapeless.

‘A Thief On My Island’ lifts spirits, making Embrace sound like an actual proper rock band but it’s the song that opens the encore, ‘Quarters’, that surprises most of all. It’s a four to the floor club stomper that actually suits McNamara’s vocal style by taking some of the attention off him. Disclosure aping synths, beats and spiky guitar melody sounding urgent and vital, especially compared to set closer ‘The Good Will Out’. Both are cracking songs, the crowd sing along to the latters outro enthusiastically but ultimately it’s when the band decide not to tread paths already crossed that they sound most exciting of all.

It might not have been a fantastic night but if the right songs are picked for the album then there might just still be a place left for Embrace in 2014. Let’s just hope that the Auto-tune wasn’t fully booked in the studio when it was recorded.