Personnel: Tim Davidson (vocals, guitar, pedal steel guitar); Jamie Houston (vocals, guitar, piano); Jim Lang (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Colin McArdle (vocals, guitar, bass guitar); Kev Sherry (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards); Noel O'Donnell (vocals, drums, percussion); Francis MacDonald (keyboards, percussion); Dave Thomas Jr. (keyboards).
Audio Mixer: Jim Lang .
Recording information: Radio City Studios.
Scotland's Attic Lights' second full-length album, 2013's Super De Luxe, expands upon the melodic pop of their 2008 debut, Friday Night Lights, with a bigger, more robust production style. Working once again with producer and Teenage Fanclub drummer Francis MacDonald, Attic Lights have crafted an album that is as infectiously melodic as anything they've done before, but feels more mainstream -- in the best possible way. The album finds the band showcasing its love of Scottish pop bands like Pilot and Teenage Fanclub, while also delving into some more dance-oriented, disco-influenced sounds that bring to mind the work of their similarly inclined contemporaries Phoenix and MGMT. Kicking off with the gargantuan glitter rock-sounding anthem "Say You Love Me," the band lays out a bombastic rebuke of scene-weary naysayers -- the kind who hyper-focus on everything they don't like rather than championing what they do. Singer Kev Sherry croons "Your likes are all defined by all the things you hate/All you can talk about is what they are wrong about and all of their mistakes." With the band's triumphant lead guitar lines laid down thick as pub smoke and a chorus that jubilantly cries "Just saaayyy you LOVE ME," the song is a celebratory command to simply let go and give in to the positive pop vibes about to come your way. And boy, do they come! Bassist Colin McArdle takes the vocal spotlight on a few tracks, like "Future Bound" and "Stay Before You Leave," lending them a particular '70s bubblegum pop vibe. Elsewhere, Sherry's songs, like the romantic "Breathe for Me" and the equally passionate "Mona Lisa," with its cinematic keyboard swells, are so sweeping and grand, you immediately want to hear them again as soon as they end. As Sherry pleads on the opening cut, "I just want to hear you say you love me," with Super De Luxe, you're likely to give Attic Lights exactly what they want. ~ Matt Collar
Professional Reviews
Mojo (Publisher) (p.96) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[W]ith stirring choruses, handclap tempos and school-disco grooves."
