Something sinister this way comes. The Enemy Chorus, The Earlies’ sophomore effort, is a sprawling, menacing beast of a record, a quantum leap in thought and execution from 2004 debut, These Were The Earlies. The Lancashire-Texas outfit have corralled an army of musicians, almost 15 in total, to create an unquestionably ambitious, unbearably ominous album, one that stalks the listener from start to finish.
It lunges at us with ‘No Love In Your Heart’, the sinister strings and nerve fraying beats opening The Earlies’ portal to lunacy. In this world, psychedelia and psychosis go hand-in-hand, with the deranged lyric of ‘Burn The Liars’ couched in sweet harmonies and expansive Beta Band sonics. Luscious ballad ‘The Ground We Walk On’ is untainted; a moment of pop purity that provides blessed relief from the unhinged interstellar meanderings that have gone before. We are, momentarily, back on terra firma. ‘Bad Is As Bad Does’ rumbles along, Delta brain-melting blues providing the basis of this bloodcurdling track. The Granddaddy cool of ‘Gone For The Most Part’, all tinkling keys and electronic trickery, leavens the gloom yet again before the magisterial bombast of ‘Foundation And Earth’. A pivotal track, it sounds as if George Clinton has beamed Giorgio Moroder aboard the mothership for a far-out space jam. The final vestiges of sanity are stripped away amidst the instrumental maelstrom of ‘Breaking Point’, the chilling climactic offering in this bold, curiosity shop of a record.