Released 18/05/09, Independiente Records

This is all well and good but ‘Bells are missing a trick here. Their new album Radio Wars contains a beguiling song called “Nightingale” which -while hardly suitable for excessively commercial outlets- is a ballad that, in an alternative universe, might attain classic status. “Nightingale” works its magic by softening their usually harsher edges and dissolving the spiny guitar riffs into an epically melancholic solution of understated beauty. This would be a choice release to make; I’m surprised they’ve sat on it for as long as they have.


The single we are here presented with on the other hand, judged against their preceding high water marks (“Blessed Night”, “Cities Burning Down”), isn’t all that it might be. Clocking in at a standardised three and a half minutes, it presents roughly half a great single. The chorus thrums with the optimism of a F major Bb major change before taking a wrong turn into the dark uncertainty of a G# major, which is an effective, if slightly awkward, sequence.


'Digital Hearts' will receive some radio play but won’t shatter any of the more reasonable preconceptions you might have about the band; it is ultimately a depressingly unexceptional release.

Posted In Single Reviews, May 19 2009. Words - Richard