Album Review : The Streets, The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light

The Streets’ sophomore record, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, reflected an erudite cinematic sensibility of pinpoint imagery and precise narrative arc. Devouring the works of Robert McKee, Syd Field and John Truby, Mike Skinner delivered a spoken-word opera. A dozen years since The Streets’ last album, Computers And Blues, they’re back with a mammoth motion picture project.

Skinner recently toured UK Everyman Cinemas with his self-directed, debut feature, sharing the same name as the album. Renaissance man is too mealy a tag, for Skinner also wrote, shot, edited, scored and funded the film!  The songs here function as the soundtrack to and narrate the action. The press release informs that “whilst neither the album or the film exist without each other - both can be enjoyed separately.” Incredibly, it’s true.

TDTSTBTL is a classic Streets album. It bursts with a shedload of superb Skinner-isms, ie. shrewd aphorisms delivered in razorsharp argot, specific to The Streets. It courses across a myriad of electronic dance genres - garage, house, dub, trance, trap - with impeccable mastery. It provides a birds-eye view of commonplace subjects and habitual situations that we oftentimes dodge and duck. And, as an added bonus, we have the opportunity of seeing this film script on the big screen.

The Darker The Shadow The Brighter the Light is out now.