Album Review: Turin Brakes, Spacehopper

Since their 2001 debut The Optimist, Turin Brakes founders Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian have garnered a reputation for creating catchy, intelligent acoustic pop.

On Spacehopper, tracks like ‘The Message’, a paean to childhood bike rides and FM radio, the gently soaring ‘Horizon’ and the six-and-a-half minute jam ‘What’s Underneath’, showcase the kind of pristine songwriting they’ve made seem effortless for almost a quarter-of-a-century

The title track, meanwhile, is ridiculously catchy pop-rock that sounds like it came from another era, before anyone with a guitar was required to write bittersweet ballads with formulaic, ascending minor chord structures.

The reflective twang of ‘Almost’, meanwhile, sounds like it was born in southern Tennessee rather than South London. Towards the middle, it veers a little towards acoustic-by-numbers, with the inoffensive ‘Lullaby’ and the pleasant-but-inessential ‘Today’.

Still, the yearning ‘Old Habits’ – with a nod towards Nashville – gets things back on track, while ‘Lazy Bones’, a sub-two minute ditty about aliens finding our species’ decomposed remains years into the future, is brief but brilliant.

7/10

Out now