Album by The Lightning Seeds

The Lightning Seeds are one of those bands where, as soon as you hear the name, you can immediately hear their music. Especially if you were around in the early ’90s. “Pure” was everywhere, so you might think you already know what the Lightning Seeds sound like. And you’re not wrong, but Cloudcuckooland has a little more texture than just synth-pop.

While the music is heavily electronic and synth-driven, there’s an older pop sensibility underneath it. I can hear echoes of ’60s music buried beneath all the technology, like Ian Broudie is taking those older pop ideas and rebuilding them with electronic sounds and studio textures.

There’s something almost culinary about the way these songs are put together. You can imagine Broudie standing over a track like a chef, tasting it and deciding it needs a little more of this, a little less of that. Add another sound. Adjust something. Taste it again. There are so many little ingredients in these songs that you almost get the feeling he could have kept tinkering forever, trying one more thing until everything was exactly where he wanted it.

“All I Want” is a little slice of pop music heaven. It’s so bright that it almost shimmers. It feels like a perfect example of late-80s and early-90s new wave, pop and modern rock all coming together. It sounds effortless. Underneath that sparkling melody is a song that could be personal, or maybe a little political, but the overall message seems to be about being heard, learning from the past and working towards something better.

“Bound in a Nutshell” brings the album down into ballad territory. It’s slower and gentler, with little touches of pop vocals and the same synth-driven sound, but everything is softened here. Again, The Lightning Seeds use an almost sweet piece of music to deliver a message that feels political. It sounds almost like a working-class anthem hiding inside this gentle music.

You can tell right away why “Pure” was the big hit from the album. That opening hooks you before the song has even really gotten started. It comes across as a gorgeous, dreamy love song, with these shimmering keyboards and synths carrying everything along.

But the more I sit with it, the more it makes me think of lying awake at night, somewhere between being asleep and being completely awake. Your mind starts wandering, and you can go from dreams that make you euphoric to anxieties that make you melancholy in the space of a few seconds.

Another light, catchy song is “Sweet Dreams.” But what stands out to me on this one are the vocals. I love the way the lead vocal moves through the song, and the harmonies in the background give it this really full, carefully constructed vocal sound. The song seems to be about a couple reaching an inflection point. They both want something a little different from life, and that difference is starting to create a distance between them.

“The Nearly Man” takes a pretty big departure from the rest of the album. The keys and synths have an almost accordion-like quality, and there’s something about the rhythm that gives the song an unusual, almost “Moroccan Nights” kind of feeling. It’s unlike anything else on the album so far.

The song gives me a sense of class and inherited circumstances, people carrying on the same burdens that have been passed down to them. Generational economic stress, and all that can come with that.

“Joy” has this really cool throwback pop feel. It sounds like a slow 80s ballad, but the drums give it a little edge. There’s something really pretty about it, and the vocal performance is especially nice. Lyrically, it feels like one of those “didn’t know what I had until I lost it” songs. It’s a nice change of pace, and a good example of Broudie taking something familiar and putting his own production style around it.

One of my favorite tracks here is “Love Explosion.” It brings back the upbeat English synth-pop sound, but this time the electric guitar is much more prominent, adding a little dream-pop/shoegaze texture to the song. It’s catchy, energetic and has another great vocal performance.

“Don’t Let Go” might be the prettiest song on the album. The melody is gorgeous, with this shimmering keyboard sound fading in and out behind everything. And I really love the vocal here. It’s gentle and warm, and probably one of my favorite performances on the album. The lyrics lean heavily on weather imagery as metaphors for a relationship. But there is a sense that through the ups and downs, there is a strong bond that remains.

Is there such a genre as synth blues? That’s what “Control the Flame” brings to mind as this sort of bluesy electric guitar weaves in and out. It’s a song about physical attraction, and the lyrics invoke the classic R&B song “Fever,” which I found to be a lot of fun. There’s a playfulness to the vocal arrangement, and the whole thing adds another flavor to the album.

The intro to “The Price” brings a more cinematic feeling to the album. From there, the song becomes a slow burn, gradually building on that opening until it takes on this really epic feeling. Broudie seems to be singing about an inability to communicate his feelings, leading to a break-up and hope for reconciliation. There’s a little sadness here, but the music gives the song a sense of momentum that I really like.

“God Help Them” is a fun way to end the album. There’s a bright little electric guitar part that reminds me of Johnny Marr, and the whole thing has more urgency and bounce than some of the songs that came before it. It feels more like indie pop, with the guitar and drums giving it a little more drive. The lyrics move through different images, but there’s something underneath them about weathering difficult times and figuring out what life and love mean through all of it.

Cloudcuckooland is a really fun snapshot of where some music was in the late 80s and early 90s. There was this bright synth-pop and indie-pop sound starting to cross over, before grunge would completely change the landscape.

Listening to it now, it definitely sounds like a product of its time, but it’s not an album trapped in time. There are enough harmonies, melodies and textures here that it makes me think of what would be called bedroom pop today.

It’s a sweet, carefully constructed pop album with a huge hit at the center of it, but there’s more going on underneath the surface than “Pure” might have you believe.

Verdict: Solid

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