Lorien - Under The Waves

Not since Morrissey uttered those immortal words "You're The One For Me Fatty" has a song so emphasized with the larger boned of the species as on Lorien's "Human Beings". Its so Lorien and the most beautiful lyric about the human condition which suggest that all this fat boy needs is someone to place their arms around him. Much of Lorien's debut album "Under The Waves" comes from the idea of being a passive voyeur into the lives of the disenchanted and the downright depressive, but then being so drawn into this other world that you can't help but get involved.

Its an album that is bound to see comparisons to the likes are Starsailor and Coldplay, but its goes deeper than that and if James Walsh or Chris Martin offer simple GCSE in melancholy then Lorien's Italian singer / songwriter Fabio went on to do a dissertation on Psychology and the human spirit. Even down to the literature drenched song titles "Milky Magic Tears", "Cherrywood Eyes" and "Shivering Sun" and the fact that they take their name from a mythical forest in Lord Of The Rings its clear that Lorien clearly aren't simply your new man types who use the sensitive tag as yet another pulling technique. Just simple lyrics such as "every star in the sky makes me happy tonight" on "Planet New Earth" can spring from the most romantically doomed of minds and leaves images of a tortured soul forever trying to escape the poetic mind and for once just wake up one morning and be free from the worries of the world.

The little intricacies on "Goodbye Star" which so easy could have been overwrought and overproduced to the extent that the gentle fragility of the song is replaced by the over-used string section. At times recalling Portishead's debut in terms of the pure intensity of the vocal and instrumentation, it avoids the tag of just being another sensitive guitar band with subtle production from Mike Hedges. The only thing stopping Lorien from world domination and stadia sized recognition is the fact they lack that killer 3 minute single, but when they have 12 tracks of exquisite beauty the conventions of an record industry on its knees really have little relevance.

Alex McCann

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