Bombay Bicycle Membership

My Massive Day

AWAL

Nov 07, 2023
Net Unique

By Alfie Verity

Bombay Bicycle Membership have a status to uphold. Although their music has performed round with varied types and genres through the years, to totally different ranges of success, their skill to make giddy, addictive bangers has not often faltered. Whether or not on old-school floorfiller “All the time Like This” or the glowing, romantic 2019 comeback hit “Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing However You),” their releases have all the time held the potential to uplift in a honest and likeable means that has stored them in a long-term excessive regard by indie-pop appreciators. On My Massive Day, their sixth studio album, they proceed to ship on expectations. This report is Bombay Bicycle Membership at their most exuberant: it’s a launch seemingly designed solely with the intention of making a collective feeling of pleasure for its listeners.

My Massive Day is a handful of sunshine, a celebration buffet of shimmering indie-pop, attended by all-star musical company: Damon Albarn, Nilüfer Yanya, and even Chaka Khan all arrive to partake within the enjoyable. There are songs on right here which give a well-recognized flavour of Bombay Bicycle Membership’s common lighthearted sparkle (“Flip the World On,” the truth is, was produced alongside Ben Allen, who the band labored with on their sunny 2011 music “Shuffle”), however the collaborative nature of My Massive Day makes the album really feel extra formidable than their earlier work.

The album finest achieves its joyous peak when its varied guests really feel like an integral collaborative aspect of their respective songs, reasonably than simply an added quirk or afterthought. Jay Som sounds stunning on “Sleepless”—the artist’s delicate, dreamy vocals swim in nice tandem with frontman Jack Steadman’s singing. Chaka Khan is a assured delight on “Tekken 2,” her iconic voice bringing the monitor’s buzzing instrumentation to a pleasant excessive, and the sensible Nilüfer Yanya’s raspy sound is buoyed by scratchy guitars on “Meditate.” Alternatively, Britpop icon Damon Albarn feels just a little bit underused on “Heaven,” a cheery-but-safe monitor that feels contrasting to its visitor star’s common penchant for danger and wackiness.

Although this collaborative aspect of the album looks like its most clearly notable attribute, loads of memorable moments come from the Bombay Bicycle Membership boys driving solo. Single “I Wish to Be Your Solely Pet” is the album’s solely moody second, a palate cleanser which makes its mark with a hooky refrain, telling the story of an individual’s want for care and freedom in a relationship which offers neither. It’s the precise form of kooky-but-emotive enjoyable that has made the band such a long-term favorite within the British indie scene.

In any other case, “Onward” is a superb closing monitor that encapsulates My Massive Day’s optimistic, effervescent nature effectively. Right here the band mirror sanguinely on the tangled, contradictory nature of life (“we’re all dying/we’re all of the kindest and the meanest”) utilizing a whole-hearted instrumentation that closes out My Massive Day with such a triumphant really feel you possibly can nearly hear viewers applause.

As its title suggests, My Massive Day is Bombay Bicycle Membership’s grandest effort but. It’s a ray of daylight which, even when it doesn’t completely stick the touchdown, is a plainly beautiful pay attention. It principally manages to keep away from that saccharine positivity that loads of grandiose indie-pop can succumb to, most likely as a result of the band have such a reliable historical past of creating peppy, danceable music that it feels real, and the truth that loads of the tracks are simply irresistibly candy. On this, their sixth album, Bombay Bicycle Membership have each embraced maximalism and sharpened their present fashion. It pays off effectively; no marvel they sound so completely happy. (www.bombaybicycle.membership)

Creator score: 7/10