It's been a while since I heard a new album that I was excited about, but Citrus is exciting. Let me be precise about this: there are at least two ways in which music can be exciting - in the sense that it promises new horizons of some kind (generic, sonic, emotional, etc), or by providing an immediate visceral rush. And while there's a bit of that first sense here, mainly I'm talking about the other - the dazzle and surge of the record, its glorious coruscating swirls. Following brief scenesetter "Everything Is On", the one-two-three of "Strawberries", "New Years" and "Thursday" is astonishingly good, but it's "Red Sea" which convinced me that Asobi Seksu are 100% the real thing (as I write this, it's still my first listen - near the tail end of the record now[*]), skyscraping melodies wrapped in shoegazer thunder and light. The album sounds amazing, and the band has songs to match - this is exactly the kind of thing I like.
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[*] That was some time last week - Thursday (appropriately) maybe. Spinning it again tonight, it doesn't seem quite as good - but listening to the record still feels, I don't know, like being wrapped up in the taste of candy.
