Album Review: Lightning Seeds, See You In The Stars

Ian Broudie has been writing and recording toe-tappingly brilliant, frequently bittersweet pop better than most of his contemporaries for more than three decades. Since he stepped out from behind the production desk in 1989, however, Broudie could hardly be accused of being prolific; See You In The Stars is just The Lightning Seeds’ seventh album and their first in 13 years.

Broudie apparently suffered something of a crisis of confidence after 2009’s Four Winds, and it took the intervention of his pal and fellow Scouser, Coral frontman James Skelly, to get him back on track; Skelly co-wrote two of these songs, the arms-in-the-air singalong of ‘Great To Be Alive’ and the gently insistent ‘Live To Love You’. Broudie roped in another old friend, former Specials singer Terry Hall, who also helped out on their 1994 megahit ‘Lucky You’, to co-write the cascading pop of ‘Emily Smiles’.

Elsewhere, there’s the bittersweet beauty of ‘Losing You’; the shimmery, smile-inducing ‘Sunshine’; the slow and string-drenched ‘Fit For Purpose’; and the sweet melancholy of the closing title-track. With 10 songs clocking in at just over the 31-minute mark, this doesn’t outstay its welcome, but when you’re nodding along happily to almost all of them – with only ‘Permanent Danger’ feeling like padding – it’d be churlish to complain.

7/10