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Track List
01) Intro
02) Wasted on Each Other
03) Pink Lemonade
04) Wild Love
05) Us
06) In My Head
07) Interlude
08) Just for Tonight
09) Wanderlust
10) I Found You
11) Sugar Drunk High
12) Stand Up
13) Fade Out
14) Slide
01) Intro
02) Wasted on Each Other
03) Pink Lemonade
04) Wild Love
05) Us
06) In My Head
07) Interlude
08) Just for Tonight
09) Wanderlust
10) I Found You
11) Sugar Drunk High
12) Stand Up
13) Fade Out
14) Slide
0:58
3:58
4:14
3:17
3:01
3:07
1:01
3:37
4:16
5:06
3:39
4:59
3:52
3:21
Data Complete
70%
Total Rating
70%Total Rating
(0 users)
Back Cover
CD Art
3D Case
3D Thumb
3D Flat
3D Face
3D Spine
First Released
2018
Indie Pop
Gentle
Rock/Pop
---
Medium
Album
0 copies
Album Description
Available in:
Electric Light is the second studio album by British singer-songwriter James Bay. The album was released on 18 May 2018 through Republic Records.
Background
On 7 March 2018, Bay announced that his second album was called Electric Light and would be released on 18 May 2018. In a press release, he said: "If I had to describe my first album visually it would probably be a flame – while this new album is about a real sonic and artistic evolution for me. The feeling of a 100 watt bulb expanding and brightening is what I envisioned. Electric Light came to my mind and I knew it was perfect."
Critical reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 71 based on 13 ratings, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Jordan Bassett of NME stated "'Electric Light' is all over the place. There are hip-hop style spoken-word skits on the record and, actually, it sometimes sounds more like a lush, exploratory mixtape than a coherent album." He rated the album 3/5. Q magazine was quoted as saying the album contains "an admirable desire for transformation."
User Album Review
A few years back, James Bay enjoyed one of those disconcertingly slick modern success stories where vast stardom seems to be almost preordained, as if the matter of selling millions was a mere formality. A model-pretty product of one of those schools that teaches you how to be a pop star for a fee, he was snapped up while still a student by the same management team that propelled James Morrison and John Newman to fame, signed by a major record label off the back of a YouTube video, stuck in the studio with a team of professional songwriters whose co-writing credits included, among other things, George Ezra’s Budapest, Jake Bugg’s Lightning Bolt and half of Ed Sheeran’s multi-platinum +, and thrust into the spotlight by the Brits critics’ choice award. Like clockwork, his single Hold Back the River spent a year on the chart, while his debut album Chaos and the Calm went straight in at No 1 and sold half a million copies in the US.
From the start, the singer was keen to impress on interviewers that he was a “blues nerd”, whose trademark hat was, he insisted, not the result of a stylist’s ministrations, but a tribute to the similar headgear sported by US country-blues traditionalist Eric Bibb. One might reasonably assume, then, that Electric Light would arrive stripped of pop gloss and sporting an advanced case of the Take Me Seriouslies, but quite the opposite. The interviews to promote it have been big on vaulting commercial ambition. The trademark hat is gone and talk of Eric Bibb appears to have been banished: it’s all Frank Ocean this and Taylor Swift that.
Indeed, Electric Light is an album that wears its commercial ambitions as proudly as its maker once sported his fedora. It frequently sounds like it might have been constructed with the aid of a wide-ranging checklist of currently modish pop styles. We move in short order from opener Wasted on Each Other, which features the kind of distorted guitar riffs and thudding percussion that powered the Arctic Monkeys’ R U Mine? to Wild Love’s take on the tropical house-infused pop sound that profitably informed Justin Bieber’s last album. There is pop-R&B that does indeed bear the hazy influence of Frank Ocean (Fade Out) and there is retro 60s soul balladry stirred with the vaguely doo-wop swing of Ed Sheeran’s Perfect (I Found You). There is a stab at the American heartlands, courtesy of the John Cougar Mellencamp-ish Just for Tonight, and a track that conjures up vague thoughts of Fleetwood Mac called Wanderlust. Meanwhile, every song has been precision-tooled to get vast crowds singing along. Indeed, quite a lot of them already do have a vast crowd singing along. The one aspect of Bay’s debut album that’s still very much in evidence is the en-masse chorus found on Hold Back the River: there are touring productions of Sister Act that deploy gospel choirs more sparingly than this album.
You can’t help but boggle a little at its ruthless efficiency, and occasionally what’s on offer is great: the single Pink Lemonade pitches a taut new wave guitar chug against a chanson-like chord sequence and a chorus that might have been written by the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb. Equally, there’s something a bit exhausting about its gimlet-eyed determination to be hugely successful: it’s like being trapped in a lift with an Apprentice contestant.
The sense of fatigue is compounded by the production, which signposts its modernity by being incredibly busy: everything is amped with distortion and slathered with effects ranging from bursts of dubby echo to mournful James Blake-like vocoder, snatches of sampled vocals fly in and out of the mix; a plethora of sounds rumble in the background, half out of earshot. Sometimes the effect is thrillingly chaotic, other times it’s cluttered. There’s a moment during In My Head when squeals of electric guitar are fighting for space with sampled whoops and screams, brass, southern soul organ and our old friend the gospel choir. It’s hard to stop yourself adding to the sonic melee with a yell of “oh, give it a rest”.
Electric Light may well achieve its stated aim – the songs are watertight and it pushes a lot of buttons marked “proven commercial success” (although Wild Love peaked at No 39). The curious thing about it is that, for all the musical changes that have been wrought, its big failing is the same as that of its predecessor. Chaos and the Calm was criticised for lacking character: it was all polite good taste. Electric Light is clearly meant to counter that charge, but amid its endless trying-on of different pop styles and production trickery, Bay himself seems as elusive as ever.
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
Available in:
Electric Light is the second studio album by British singer-songwriter James Bay. The album was released on 18 May 2018 through Republic Records.
Background
On 7 March 2018, Bay announced that his second album was called Electric Light and would be released on 18 May 2018. In a press release, he said: "If I had to describe my first album visually it would probably be a flame – while this new album is about a real sonic and artistic evolution for me. The feeling of a 100 watt bulb expanding and brightening is what I envisioned. Electric Light came to my mind and I knew it was perfect."
Critical reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 71 based on 13 ratings, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Jordan Bassett of NME stated "'Electric Light' is all over the place. There are hip-hop style spoken-word skits on the record and, actually, it sometimes sounds more like a lush, exploratory mixtape than a coherent album." He rated the album 3/5. Q magazine was quoted as saying the album contains "an admirable desire for transformation."
User Album Review
A few years back, James Bay enjoyed one of those disconcertingly slick modern success stories where vast stardom seems to be almost preordained, as if the matter of selling millions was a mere formality. A model-pretty product of one of those schools that teaches you how to be a pop star for a fee, he was snapped up while still a student by the same management team that propelled James Morrison and John Newman to fame, signed by a major record label off the back of a YouTube video, stuck in the studio with a team of professional songwriters whose co-writing credits included, among other things, George Ezra’s Budapest, Jake Bugg’s Lightning Bolt and half of Ed Sheeran’s multi-platinum +, and thrust into the spotlight by the Brits critics’ choice award. Like clockwork, his single Hold Back the River spent a year on the chart, while his debut album Chaos and the Calm went straight in at No 1 and sold half a million copies in the US.
From the start, the singer was keen to impress on interviewers that he was a “blues nerd”, whose trademark hat was, he insisted, not the result of a stylist’s ministrations, but a tribute to the similar headgear sported by US country-blues traditionalist Eric Bibb. One might reasonably assume, then, that Electric Light would arrive stripped of pop gloss and sporting an advanced case of the Take Me Seriouslies, but quite the opposite. The interviews to promote it have been big on vaulting commercial ambition. The trademark hat is gone and talk of Eric Bibb appears to have been banished: it’s all Frank Ocean this and Taylor Swift that.
Indeed, Electric Light is an album that wears its commercial ambitions as proudly as its maker once sported his fedora. It frequently sounds like it might have been constructed with the aid of a wide-ranging checklist of currently modish pop styles. We move in short order from opener Wasted on Each Other, which features the kind of distorted guitar riffs and thudding percussion that powered the Arctic Monkeys’ R U Mine? to Wild Love’s take on the tropical house-infused pop sound that profitably informed Justin Bieber’s last album. There is pop-R&B that does indeed bear the hazy influence of Frank Ocean (Fade Out) and there is retro 60s soul balladry stirred with the vaguely doo-wop swing of Ed Sheeran’s Perfect (I Found You). There is a stab at the American heartlands, courtesy of the John Cougar Mellencamp-ish Just for Tonight, and a track that conjures up vague thoughts of Fleetwood Mac called Wanderlust. Meanwhile, every song has been precision-tooled to get vast crowds singing along. Indeed, quite a lot of them already do have a vast crowd singing along. The one aspect of Bay’s debut album that’s still very much in evidence is the en-masse chorus found on Hold Back the River: there are touring productions of Sister Act that deploy gospel choirs more sparingly than this album.
You can’t help but boggle a little at its ruthless efficiency, and occasionally what’s on offer is great: the single Pink Lemonade pitches a taut new wave guitar chug against a chanson-like chord sequence and a chorus that might have been written by the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb. Equally, there’s something a bit exhausting about its gimlet-eyed determination to be hugely successful: it’s like being trapped in a lift with an Apprentice contestant.
The sense of fatigue is compounded by the production, which signposts its modernity by being incredibly busy: everything is amped with distortion and slathered with effects ranging from bursts of dubby echo to mournful James Blake-like vocoder, snatches of sampled vocals fly in and out of the mix; a plethora of sounds rumble in the background, half out of earshot. Sometimes the effect is thrillingly chaotic, other times it’s cluttered. There’s a moment during In My Head when squeals of electric guitar are fighting for space with sampled whoops and screams, brass, southern soul organ and our old friend the gospel choir. It’s hard to stop yourself adding to the sonic melee with a yell of “oh, give it a rest”.
Electric Light may well achieve its stated aim – the songs are watertight and it pushes a lot of buttons marked “proven commercial success” (although Wild Love peaked at No 39). The curious thing about it is that, for all the musical changes that have been wrought, its big failing is the same as that of its predecessor. Chaos and the Calm was criticised for lacking character: it was all polite good taste. Electric Light is clearly meant to counter that charge, but amid its endless trying-on of different pop styles and production trickery, Bay himself seems as elusive as ever.
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
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