Music > Album Reviews

Blancmange - Wanderlust

26/09/18

It’s great to have Blancmange back on the scene. Back in the day, in the eighties, they delivered some quite brilliant music and were an excellent live band to boot, and were well renowned for their ground-shaking electronic synthesiser sounds.

Since 2011 lead singer Neil Arthur has been recording fresh material, but without his original band partner Stephen Luscombe (who retired due to illness) since their comeback album Blanc Burn. In 2019, the band will be forty years old, so it’s quite an achievement to still be writing and recording new material after all this time.

Wanderlust follows last year's Unfurnished Rooms and has some great songs on it. Opener Distant Storm has the classic Blancmange machine gun pumping keyboard / synth running through its duration. I Smashed Your Phone is a four-minutes-forty drama about a bit of domestic bother that’s kicking off and rather angrily being played out. The intoxicating piece that is Leaves is also another bold bruiser of a track.

Their sound is certainly still sharp and fresh and retains a very edgy feel to it; they still pack a real killer punch and Wanderlust certainly has all the trademarks of some of their very finest works.

They are playing at NAC on the 1st of November, so be sure to check them out for a great live show.