Razorlight are back with a new album, Planet Nowhere—featuring the original lineup from their first two albums(!). Lead vocalist, Johnny Borrel, wants Razorlight to create new music—not to cash in as a greatest hits band. The upcoming small venues tour ahead of Planet Nowhere’s release on October 25th shows that they want to focus on the new material.
I couldn’t be happier about this. I was a teenager at the start and height of Razorlight. I’ve never listened to a lot of ‘new’ music (ie anything made after the 1980s), but I bought the first singles and, got their debut album Up All Night for my 14th birthday. Those first two Razorlight albums were my teenage years. These were the kind of albums where you listened to the whole album, and you loved every track. That’s what I expect from Razorlight.
Planet Nowhere comes out the day after their small venues tour ends. It’s a bold choice to do a tour of the new songs before releasing the album, and it signals their intent to remain current, not retrospective as a band.
With ten short and punchy tracks, Planet Nowhere feels like a follow-on from those first two albums. But it’s definitely new music. Their sound has evolved, it’s not as stripped back as the first two albums and there’s an electronic synth undertone that runs through the album. The tracks are still very much guitar-led, with some of that Razorlight grittiness. There’s more to it now, however. The layering and more interesting arrangement speak to a greater confidence. Johnny plays around with different styles of vocals. You certainly can’t call it a boring album.
Track listing:
- Zombie Love
- U Can Call Me
- Taylor Swift = US Soft Propaganda
- Dirty Luck
- Scared of Nothing
- F.O.B.F
- Empire Service
- Cyclops
- Cool People
- April Ends
Just look at Scared of Nothing, the first single, and lead track of the album. This song sets the tone for the album, it’s engaging and guitar-led while the synth sound weaves in and out.
F.O.B.F is a genuinely interesting (and nonsensical) song. There is a lot of layering and clever arrangement – tension and release, building and breaking momentum. Whereas Cyclops really leans into the more electronic synth sound on the album. It’s quite different to what you think of as ‘typical’ Razorlight sound, but it grows on you.
Somewhat intentionally, a number of the songs don’t actually make a lot of sense. My favourite track is Taylor Swift = US Propaganda*. At 2:05 it’s super short, so it grabs you quickly. There’s tons of guitar and the synths are central to the song’s riff-driven sound.
*There is no connection to Taylor Swift, so all the Swifties can rest easy. (In a July interview, Johnny Borrell explained that the title came from a random piece of paper he saw during the writing process, and it just stuck.)
When bands ‘come back’ there can be a tendency to take themselves too seriously. That’s not a problem with Planet Nowhere. Cool People is like the better version of the second single, Empire Service. It’s cheeky and I think this one will be fun live, especially in this upcoming tour as no one’s heard it yet.
There’s also something for those who like the softer Razorlight tracks, April Ends is akin to ‘Fall, Fall, Fall’, but not quite as mellow, and not acoustic.
Planet Nowhere, the verdict
Ultimately, Planet Nowhere picks up from where the first two albums left off 17 years ago: it represents an evolved Razorlight. It gives fans exactly what they, or at least I, want from Razorlight: an album where you can listen to (almost) all the tracks obsessively. And this is exactly what I have done for the past two months on the pretence of reviewing this album. Only a great album can stand up to such continual exposure – and this one certainly does.
Razorlight’s new album, Planet Nowhere, will released on 25th October. You can listen to the first three tracks off the album now:
You can also preorder the album on cassette(!), CD and vinyl, and get other album-related merch, here.
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