2023 - UK
Art Rock, Trip Hop, Ambient Pop, Progressive Electronic
Quiet, dark, melodic and electronic, four words describing their last album The False Foundation, six years ago. Since then, many things changed within the band and around them, around us. Coming back with a seventeen-track album, almost two hours long, seemed like a big challenge. But if Archive releases an album, the first reason has to be because they face a challenge and need to outdo themselves. With their twelfth studio album Call to Arms & Angels, all of the five singers participating to the project, the band wanted to reflect on those last years, with its lockdowns, pandemic, far-right increase everywhere, Brexit and individual anxieties. With all those themes, the British collective found a new way to work, to renew their sound while sticking to their roots, with an album as challenging for them to make than for us to listen to. Archive has never been that cerebral and precise before, sonically speaking.
If Call to Arms & Angels reminds us of their political masterpiece Controlling Crowds back in 2009, it clearly doesn’t have the same appeal, with the attractive rythms and sounds songs like Bullets, Kings of Speed and Bastardised Ink had. Here, everything is bathed in dark and unexpected textures. For instance, it’s the first time Archive apply that much electronic effects on voices. Because, more than ever, the band tries to sound like an entity moving from one song to the other with as much fluidity as they can. Even if we can easily identify every singer (except on the last song where Dave Pen’s voice is unrecognizable), they almost constantly dissolve in the textures Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths made (Griffiths clearly being inspired by his previous and beautiful sombre work A Little Less Fire). But if we can feel this linearity in the album, making this an essential listen from start to finish without a single interruption, they break up the words, rely on abrupt silences and key changes, turning the songs into moving matter impossible to catch.
All of these parameters make the first listen of this album harder, because even if you can feel the consistency and innovative craftsmanship, some songs like Freedom, Enemy or Gold might feel cryptic at first. But then you launch the album again, the exploration differs, the sounds start to become familiar. Singer Holly Martin said about the album: “In the past two years we’ve been seeing how constant fear and uncertainty can impact human connections”. This sentence perfectly represents the feeling I have about this album, more than being about the relationships between human beings, it’s about what’s between them, what exists and what doesn’t. It’s about the intangible. Enemy, Shouting Within, Fear There & Everywhere and Numbers are all songs pointing at those silent troubles shaking us. And the energy in those songs, from rage to rest, from rapture to lament is increased tenfold by the song structures.
What you feel in those song structures is how well Archive shows how light glows in the dark, how dark alter light within itself. Like Lisa Mottram sings it “Freedom comes with chain / Freedom comes with pain / Freedom tastes like dirt”. Freedom is divided into two parts, the first one about enjoying your happiness, sang by Pollard Berrier, the other one about what’s hiding behind that enjoyment, sang by Lisa Mottram, the quiet voice of despair. Another symptom of that pattern is in Numbers with Holly Martin. The song is reminiscent of those powerful and raw song by Holly like Violently and Kid Corner, never chasing after a catchy melody. But during the bridge of this repetitive song, Numbers turns out to be an elevating and moving music piece with many more layers than one might think it has. Even on a lyrical song like the stirring Surrounded by Ghosts and All That I Have, piano chords and digital choirs make the atmosphere denser, and shadier.
Like a dream inside a dream, Archive’s Call to Arms & Angels is an album that recquires time and focus to unfold all its subtlety and enigmatic moments. In a world meeting constant uncertainty and rising concerns about its stability and sustainability in the form it has today, Archive impressively finds the imperfect balance to make us feel all their anxieties and the fears they are confronted with. During those past years, Archive has never been that prolific, and recorded many more demos that aren’t on the album. And when Gold ends with its cathartic and somehow laconic build-up, doubts remains, questions are left, some songs may have passed without you noticing, it doesn’t really feel like an ending. Call to Arms & Angels is a slice of life, just like movies like Linklater’s Boyhood or Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop. It just flows till it suddenly stops, with that very special fractured atmosphere only Archive can make.
If Call to Arms & Angels reminds us of their political masterpiece Controlling Crowds back in 2009, it clearly doesn’t have the same appeal, with the attractive rythms and sounds songs like Bullets, Kings of Speed and Bastardised Ink had. Here, everything is bathed in dark and unexpected textures. For instance, it’s the first time Archive apply that much electronic effects on voices. Because, more than ever, the band tries to sound like an entity moving from one song to the other with as much fluidity as they can. Even if we can easily identify every singer (except on the last song where Dave Pen’s voice is unrecognizable), they almost constantly dissolve in the textures Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths made (Griffiths clearly being inspired by his previous and beautiful sombre work A Little Less Fire). But if we can feel this linearity in the album, making this an essential listen from start to finish without a single interruption, they break up the words, rely on abrupt silences and key changes, turning the songs into moving matter impossible to catch.
All of these parameters make the first listen of this album harder, because even if you can feel the consistency and innovative craftsmanship, some songs like Freedom, Enemy or Gold might feel cryptic at first. But then you launch the album again, the exploration differs, the sounds start to become familiar. Singer Holly Martin said about the album: “In the past two years we’ve been seeing how constant fear and uncertainty can impact human connections”. This sentence perfectly represents the feeling I have about this album, more than being about the relationships between human beings, it’s about what’s between them, what exists and what doesn’t. It’s about the intangible. Enemy, Shouting Within, Fear There & Everywhere and Numbers are all songs pointing at those silent troubles shaking us. And the energy in those songs, from rage to rest, from rapture to lament is increased tenfold by the song structures.
What you feel in those song structures is how well Archive shows how light glows in the dark, how dark alter light within itself. Like Lisa Mottram sings it “Freedom comes with chain / Freedom comes with pain / Freedom tastes like dirt”. Freedom is divided into two parts, the first one about enjoying your happiness, sang by Pollard Berrier, the other one about what’s hiding behind that enjoyment, sang by Lisa Mottram, the quiet voice of despair. Another symptom of that pattern is in Numbers with Holly Martin. The song is reminiscent of those powerful and raw song by Holly like Violently and Kid Corner, never chasing after a catchy melody. But during the bridge of this repetitive song, Numbers turns out to be an elevating and moving music piece with many more layers than one might think it has. Even on a lyrical song like the stirring Surrounded by Ghosts and All That I Have, piano chords and digital choirs make the atmosphere denser, and shadier.
Like a dream inside a dream, Archive’s Call to Arms & Angels is an album that recquires time and focus to unfold all its subtlety and enigmatic moments. In a world meeting constant uncertainty and rising concerns about its stability and sustainability in the form it has today, Archive impressively finds the imperfect balance to make us feel all their anxieties and the fears they are confronted with. During those past years, Archive has never been that prolific, and recorded many more demos that aren’t on the album. And when Gold ends with its cathartic and somehow laconic build-up, doubts remains, questions are left, some songs may have passed without you noticing, it doesn’t really feel like an ending. Call to Arms & Angels is a slice of life, just like movies like Linklater’s Boyhood or Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop. It just flows till it suddenly stops, with that very special fractured atmosphere only Archive can make.