It’s a popular notion that, music wise, we’re following our herd instincts, becoming rather than explorers of the new, instead defaulters to a role of collecting tokens and symbols.
It’s a compelling argument, one backed up by the fact that The Beatles and Stones are plastered on the front of so many teenagers’ chests and also probably why countless 80s has-beens are more popular now than they ever were back in the day.
In an era when success or failure may come down to the creators of something as cold and spiritless as an algorithm, Irish quintet Bell X1 are happy to leave things a little more to chance. Arms is their seventh album but, despite being undeniably a big deal at home, their unassuming brand of trenchant rock has remained a largely domestic phenomenon.
Whether its release changes this state of affairs is open to debate, but singer Paul Noonan has paid tribute to the band’s determination to keep evolving, declaring Arms, ‘the most difficult record we’ve made, in terms of feeling like it was good enough to share…we’d made something different to what’s come before’.
This indecision not only affected the record’s making, it helped define it. Opener Fail Again, Fail Better not only takes their singular premise musically and flushes it with samples and a drum loop, but also frames it with terms of perseverance, a Robert The Bruce analogy revealing their new approach. It’s the most adventurous departure here, but the rest is filled with what Bell X1 do best; warmly sardonic one liners like, “Let’s ask what the markets would do/’cos markets have feelings to”, which introduce Bring Me A Fire King, the affectionate storytelling of Fake Memory, the quiet, naked soul of Sons & Daughters.
If this counts as taking fewer risks with your values than at first glance, the underlying message is almost revelatory; the space for us to feel optimism. As well as Fail Again’s mantra, there’s the reciprocity of simple love in The Upswing, whilst Arms’ most sublime moment is Take Your Sweet Time, the words about the collision between expectation and reality, the song itself as poised and graceful as the trio have been in recent years.
Displaying these vulnerabilities when cynicism is our default setting and every consumer is so conscious of self is a move of unqualified bravery, and their contemporaries are thin on the ground – David Gray and The Boxer Rebellion in a similar frame of mind. If we’re merely conditioned to feel only the things we’re supposed to, in wanting to change but not just for its sake and by empathising with us rather than making us concubines, Bell X1 have embraced the human. Arms is a feel good record in a moment when it’s almost a crime to do so.
You may not recognise yourself from the other side of the glass once you’ve fallen for it.