‘The Performer’ is the both the debut solo album from Klaxons’ James Righton, or it is the follow-up to his earlier album as Shock Machine. It is actually the primary album by Righton to take his identify relatively than a moniker. On it he tries to resolve his inside conflicts between the variations he sees in his on a regular basis self and himself when he’s a performer. The persevering with battle to correctly and successfully discover a harmonious psychological stability between the 2, typically disparate, states are what contributes to a cohesive thread that runs by way of this album.
It is fifteen years on from James, Jamie and Simon forming Klaxons, 13 years on from the band’s Mercury Prize successful debut album ‘Myths Of The Close to Future’, seven years since Righton turned Mr Kiera Knightley and 5 years since he turned a father for the primary time; it is also 5 years since his band successfully cut up up. With out exception, all of those components come to play a component on his newest launch. Whether or not it’s the plain tracks such because the title monitor or the tender, laid-back string enhanced ‘Edie’ – a music written about his daughter – or the marginally much less apparent ‘Are You With Me Now’, all of them tie in to the theme.
Questioning whether or not he is nonetheless bought it or “misplaced his recreation”, whether or not or not it was all a dream, whether or not or not it meant/means something and whether or not or not he is dwelling life as finest he ought to should not unusual musings for anybody, but it surely does make for fairly a self-centred, selfish album. Lengthy gone are the reducing electro-pop fuelled tunes that seize you from the off and speed up onto a hook-laden dancefloor crammed with Nu-Rave. Righton is now taking a extra thought-about, practically at all times much less industrial and apparent route along with his new album. It is virtually as if he is intentionally making an attempt to distance himself from the very factor that he and his band have been synonymous for.
The primary exception to this, considerably paradoxically, is the title monitor: ‘The Performer’. The album’s opening monitor, launched late final 12 months, sits nearly on the proper aspect of the Mika/Metronomy see-saw. The wannabe showtune has an virtually irresistible undercurrent and a really theatrical bent. The close to sleazy construct and break make for fairly a flamboyant, seductive begin to the album and the added percussion and brass positively add to its pull. ‘The Performer’, nonetheless, isn’t consultant of the final temper and really feel on the remainder of the album.
Righton does get extra animated elsewhere on the album however by no means so successfully. On the throwaway jangly pop tune ‘Begin’ and on ‘See The Monster’, the place using some very evocative and cinematic strings assist the story-telling unfold, James touches on former glories however in a brand new guise. On ‘Heavy Coronary heart’ although we see a gradual, comfortable, quietly melancholic remorse while ‘Are You With Me’ we see parts of despair.
James Righton’s newest album is well-produced, well-arranged and put collectively very proficiently and professionally. It does, nonetheless, really feel slightly soulless at instances and slightly too manufactured. There are some good songs on ‘The Performer’ however not sufficient to make it an incredible album. Regardless of James Righton’s undoubted pedigree and the assistance of Sean O’Hagan, James Ford, Jorja Chalmers and Josephine Stevenson, this isn’t Righton’s most interesting work up to now.
