It seems like only yesterday that Temples’ debut album, ‘Sun Structures’, wooed us with its poppy psychedelia. The young Kettering quartet became another band to jump on the psych revival bandwagon, generating plenty of column inches and breaking the top 10 of the UK album chart. Incredibly, it’s now over three years old.
‘Sun Structures’ was peppered with catchy, hook-laden nuggets. The majestic Colours To Life was a revelation and Shelter Song, Sand Dance and Keep In The Dark provided ample support to the record’s kaleidoscopic highlight.
Temples weren’t shy of releasing a single or two, either. In total, five were lifted from ‘Sun Structures’. The first to emerge from its follow up, ‘Volcano’, was the album opener Certainty and its meandering keyboard hook has the capacity to worm its way inside the brain. It also represents a formula that is repeated throughout the album.
Similar hypnotic, snake-charmer-like lines act as catalysts for a host of tracks. Unfortunately, due to the cheesy synth tones chosen, both Certainty and other tunes appear playfully poppy at first before giving way to the nagging doubt that they could grate after a few spins.
(I Want To Be Your) Mirror follows the same path, but this time its almost medieval, flute-like keys filter into a more updated psych sound that invokes comparisons with the more refined sounds of, say, Tame Impala. Oh The Saviour also benefits from a solid chorus and a truncated synth line.
Strange or Be Forgotten represents one of the album’s best moments, despite an uncanny resemblance in its chorus to Kasabian’s Days Are Forgotten, but the record’s peak arrives with How Would You Like To Go?, which is something of an upgrade on the band’s direction to date. Again it recalls the more evolved psych-rock of Tame Impala and cousins POND, with an impressive, soaring chorus and dreamy verses perhaps representing a direction Temples should consider taking.
There’s less to get excited about elsewhere. Born Into The Sunset’s melody sounds a little like a watered down Garbage effort, while Mystery Of Pop’s jolly, flute-based hook will please fleetingly before its jauntiness becomes tiresome. Roman God-Like Man, meanwhile, is better and has a catchy instrumental break to thank for elevating the track beyond a middling chorus.
You can spot the best bits a mile off on ‘Volcano’. A chorus here, a verse there, a riff, a hook, a catchy melody. It's overflowing with them. The problem is that they rarely arrive together or do enough to lift the tracks as a whole. As a result, the album inevitably falls short of ‘Sun Structures’ and lacks any truly killer numbers.
Temples Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun March 26 2017 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Riverside
Mon March 27 2017 - SHEFFIELD Leadmill
Tue March 28 2017 - MANCHESTER Manchester Academy 2
Thu March 30 2017 - LONDON Electric Brixton
Fri March 31 2017 - BRIGHTON Brighton Concorde 2
Sun April 02 2017 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute
Thu April 27 2017 - BRISTOL Trinity
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