Album Review: One More Light, Linkin Park

Bound to be controversial with the band’s alternative audience, Linkin Park’s latest work is a refreshing blast of unabashed ear candy. Setting out their stall with earworm opener ‘Nobody Can Save Me’, listeners are under no illusions; this is a record of obvious commercial potential. Album highlight ‘Invisible’ induces the summer sugar rush of great pop, with its irresistible melody, ambient textures, sumptuous production, and anthemic singalong chorus that won’t quit.

The collaborative efforts (including single ‘Heavy’ with Kiiara) prove the weakest here, being so far removed from the band’s musical identity they verge on the anonymous. Thankfully, no song outstays its welcome, though the streamlined production occasionally wears thin in its pursuit of modern relevance. Tracks are co-written/crafted by various pop songsmiths and R&B producers, and unfortunately the studio sheen results in a generic quality to some of the playing. Overwhelmed by the wash of electronica, guitarist Brad Delson, for example, suspends the edgier auditory assaults of previous albums.

One More Light remains the kind of album 1970s rock bands released when appealing to chart audiences in the 1980s – think The Cars’ Door To Door, Killing Joke’s Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, or Psychedelic Furs’ Midnight To Midnight – competitively contemporary, easily digestible, eminently listenable, if fleeting and inconsequential.

Those who came of age to Hybrid Theory’s alternative hits may balk at the fashionable production, but for the less discriminating, this is a fine – if pedestrian – pop record.

Out now.