A Brief Crack of Light
A bit like Muse’s The 2nd Law, Therapy?’s thirteenth studio album is a release by a much-loved favourite that’s an improvement on recent efforts while not getting at all close to the highs of the glorious past. Also like The 2nd Law, A Brief Crack of Light is a hit-and-miss affair. Single ‘Living in the Shadow of a Terrible Thing’ could comfortably sit on one of Therapy?’s mid-90s to mid-2000s classic records, both in terms of quality and style. ‘Get Your Dead Hand off My Shoulder’ is Therapy? at their disturbing radio-avoiding best, in the Suicide Pact – You First vein. Album closer ‘Ecclesiastes’ is a slow synth-voice lament that draws you in and lives in your head all day. So far, so awesome. The trouble is that certain other tracks (take, ‘The Buzzing’) are so wilfully discordant and unpalatable that the whole record suffers. Therapy?’s refusal to compromise is one of the reasons that they’re so great, but it also means they have a lack of quality control at times. Dirgy stuff of this sort was what brought down their previous record, Crooked Timber, too (though the damage on A Brief Crack of Light is less pervasive – this is certainly the better effort).Some super moments, but it has to be said that this is now three Therapy? albums in a row that have been merely ‘good’ rather than ‘utterly amazing’. You have to go back to 2004 for their last hum-dinger. End of an era?