Album Review: The Horn – Catalyst
The Horn are a five-piece British band, whose 2023 debut People Like Us has passed four million streams, and since then they've toured with Starsailor and The Boomtown Rats. Their second album, Catalyst, comes out on October 30. They recorded it at RAK and Abbey Road with producer Danton Supple, who has worked with Coldplay, Elbow and Suede.
The album opens with "Back on the Path," and it pulls you in from the first seconds: lush strings, guitars drowning in reverb, somewhere close to where The Last Shadow Puppets live. You can almost see it: a desert, a hot sun, and a squinting hero who looks a lot like Clint Eastwood, riding in to save the day. It's the kind of thing Morricone might have written if someone had asked him for a pop hit.
"Guess All You Want" uses the same ingredients but picks up the pace: a pulsing bass and galloping drums turn it into a chase. It's another movie scene, just as epic, only this one feels stranger, more like a dream sequence than a shootout.
"Beautiful Lie" is the album's best shot at a worldwide hit. It brings to mind The Verve and early Coldplay, only with the production pushed toward a wall of sound approach. The vocals are soft and close, while everything around them keeps swelling until it fills the whole space. Imagine Brian Eno teaming up with Nigel Godrich around the time he was making records with Travis. It calms you down and lifts you up at the same time, and that's a rare feat.
"Something You Forgot" keeps the sun out, with warm guitars that ring rather than roar. Think U2 at their kindest and brightest, with choruses built for stadiums and guitar lines you can sing along to. Songs like this were made for the moment when twenty thousand people raise their phones and the singer just points the microphone at them.
The album closes with "One of Us." The vocals sound like they're being whispered right into your ear, and the acoustic guitar rocks you back and forth like the tide. The brass is warm but far away, the way it is on Camera Obscura records. There's a bit of country in it, yet it couldn't sound more British. The guitar solo is almost childishly simple, the kind of thing Albert Hammond Jr. might play while stargazing somewhere in the Altai Mountains.
Catalyst starts in a desert at noon and ends under the stars, and you never notice how you got from one to the other. The Horn don't try to reinvent the wheel here. They just write big, warm songs and play them like they still believe that's enough. On this record, it is. Put it on on October 30, preferably on a long drive with nowhere in particular to go.
The album opens with "Back on the Path," and it pulls you in from the first seconds: lush strings, guitars drowning in reverb, somewhere close to where The Last Shadow Puppets live. You can almost see it: a desert, a hot sun, and a squinting hero who looks a lot like Clint Eastwood, riding in to save the day. It's the kind of thing Morricone might have written if someone had asked him for a pop hit.
"Guess All You Want" uses the same ingredients but picks up the pace: a pulsing bass and galloping drums turn it into a chase. It's another movie scene, just as epic, only this one feels stranger, more like a dream sequence than a shootout.
"Beautiful Lie" is the album's best shot at a worldwide hit. It brings to mind The Verve and early Coldplay, only with the production pushed toward a wall of sound approach. The vocals are soft and close, while everything around them keeps swelling until it fills the whole space. Imagine Brian Eno teaming up with Nigel Godrich around the time he was making records with Travis. It calms you down and lifts you up at the same time, and that's a rare feat.
"Something You Forgot" keeps the sun out, with warm guitars that ring rather than roar. Think U2 at their kindest and brightest, with choruses built for stadiums and guitar lines you can sing along to. Songs like this were made for the moment when twenty thousand people raise their phones and the singer just points the microphone at them.
The album closes with "One of Us." The vocals sound like they're being whispered right into your ear, and the acoustic guitar rocks you back and forth like the tide. The brass is warm but far away, the way it is on Camera Obscura records. There's a bit of country in it, yet it couldn't sound more British. The guitar solo is almost childishly simple, the kind of thing Albert Hammond Jr. might play while stargazing somewhere in the Altai Mountains.
Catalyst starts in a desert at noon and ends under the stars, and you never notice how you got from one to the other. The Horn don't try to reinvent the wheel here. They just write big, warm songs and play them like they still believe that's enough. On this record, it is. Put it on on October 30, preferably on a long drive with nowhere in particular to go.