Album Review :: Lola Colt - Away From The Water

Lola Colt

Away From The Water

October 27 2014 (Fuzz Club Records)

9/10

Words: Richard O’Hagan

Londoners Lola Colt have been tipped for success for some little while now, making this one of the more hotly awaited debuts of the pre-Christmas season. It doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it might just be one of the finest things you will hear all year.

The influence of Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos is plain, as the entire album battles to sound simultaneously sparse, and, enormous. The effect is of the sextet being pulled in two directions at once for almost an hour, and where with lesser bands this might be a massive disadvantage, Lola Colt turn it into something weirdly brilliant.

Lead singer Gun Overbye is without doubt the star of the show, her voice sounding like an amalgam of Siouxsie Sioux and 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant. Those are big names to live up to, but she carries it off with aplomb. Indeed, album opener ‘Rings of Ghosts’ is in itself eerily reminiscent of early Banshees, whilst the track which follows it, ‘Heartbreaker’, is so much like a gothic Doors track that it is easy to imagine the ghost of Morrison swaying along to it. Lead single “Driving Mr Johnny” is so atmospheric that it is almost claustrophobic.

The whole album shows just how far Lola Colt have come during 2014. Debut single ‘I Get High When You Get High’ is almost the worst track on here. By contrast, ‘Moonlight’ reaches a level of wilful obscurity that it took The Cure two decades to reach and the mostly instrumental title track is so good that this reviewer’s listening notes simply read ‘YES!’

If there is one criticism to be made of this album, it is that some of the songs are overly long and could have been tightened up, with ‘White Horses’ being almost entirely superfluous. That one number slips below the high standards you’ve set yourselves is nothing to be ashamed of, though. This is truly one of the best and most interesting albums of 2014.