Posted by Lanterns On The Lake are really spoiling us with new music this week. With their Mercury Award- nominated last album ‘Spook The Herd’ only emerging at the start of the year, the Newcastle group provide fans with an early Christmas present in the form of a five- song EP.
A short, but blissful EP, ‘The Realist’ demonstrates that they know how to craft a beautiful violin lead ballad; at times, though, it struggles to stand on its own, with the songs drifting into one another.
All tracks on the EP follow a similar formula. Start slow and solemn, then enter frontwoman Hazel Wilde for her ever-loudening, warm and syrupy sweet vocals, detailing her inner turmoil. Her gorgeous Geordie tone sounds particularly astounding at the end of the title track ‘The Realist’ while she sings “every moth needs a flame”.
However, every song on the EP seems as if it is building to a big euphoric climax, with the soaring violins seeming to foreshadow the cumulative greatness that is surely about to burst through your speakers. Yet, as you reach the final seconds of each track it becomes clear that the greatness you were expecting is nowhere to be found, leaving you with a musical hard-on that just won’t go away.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the stripped back version of their song ‘Baddies’ from February’s ‘Spook The Herd’. If the original was anything to go by, what we should of heard here would have been intensely captivating and beautifully painful. However, here the band dip their toes into the ocean of the full track and only end up getting soggy socks.
‘The Realist’ provides some undeniably touching moments but is ultimately overshadowed by its incredible predecessor.
6/10
Words: Mason Meyers
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