Dark Houses

After nearly two years of radio silence, The Lost Music Club - a record label dedicated to releasing "unreleased gems of the analogue age" - are back with a) a vengeance, and b) their best release yet. Dark Houses were a short-lived British band whose lineup included three former members of Hope of the States, and Dark Houses is the eponymous debut album that was committed to tape circa 2006 but kept from the public ear until The LMC got their hands on it earlier this year.

It's strange, given that Dark Houses was recorded roughly a decade in the past, but I don't think I've heard another album this year that so perfectly captures the prevailing mood of Great Britain in 2016. It's hard not to be reminded of our present mid-Brexit malaise upon hearing the lyrics of the wonderfully drunken-sounding Rot and Gin:

"We're an island lost at sea
Save yourselves, here monsters be
A land of drunken drinkers drink
To everything we used to be"

There's a nostalgia in that lyric (and elsewhere on this album) that very closely resembles the longing that seemingly drove many people to vote Leave back in June, the longing to return to an idealistic past version of Great Britain that may or may not ever have existed. "This country isn't what it was," sings Sam Herlihy on Pidgin England, and for a moment you wonder if this thrilling, widescreen rock album was masterminded by a Daily Express reader.