I would never have imagined the giant leaps stylistically that These New Puritans would have made from their last album Beat Pyramid to their newest album, Hidden. In just a few years, the already confident sounds on Beat Pyramid have given way to an almost complete overhaul of what These New Puritans seemed capable of doing, or recording. The almost boundless energy and creative haze surrounding these songs is as far removed from Beat Pyramid as it is from These New Puritans themselves. Gone, well mostly, are the post-rock posturing and Bloc Party chorusing favored on Beat Pyramid. These songs here are built upon the belief that they could indeed be songs if the These New Puritans were cleaver enough and creative enough to discover them. Each song forgoes the chorus-verse-chorus routine and simply lets the band range from beat to beat. There are spoken word diatribes, instrumental half-breaks, even strings and woodwinds thrown together and somehow through the tight control of the band, it works and it is fascinating to see the music flow. Semi-concrete ideas and half-finished lyrical etchings comprise most of the vocal duties here; so the music, for the most part, carries the album, though I'd not diminish the wordplay, as some of the songs do indeed provide forceful reckoning. Hidden is the album, I'd wager, that These New Puritans wanted to make from the get-go, but, new to the studio, weren't quite sure how to go about doing. With their new found technical, as well as creative, prowess in hand, I'd say These New Puritans are only beginning to show us what they can do.
Tracklisting:
01. Time Xone
02. We Want War (listen to the mp3 below)
03. Three Thousand
04. Hologram
05. Attack Music
06. Fire-Power
07. Orion
08. Canticle
09. Drum Courts - Where Corals Lie
10. White Chords
11. 5
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