Crystal Fighters - Love Alight Single Review

Since their debut album ‘Star of Love’ in 2010, Crystal Fighters have achieved the seemingly impossible feat of fusing together folk, traditional Basque rhythms and EDM to create a unique brand inexplicably infectious rave.

Part of Crystal Fighters’ charm has always been that, taken as a sum of its parts, their music should have sounded like a horrendously ill-conceived mismatch, but instead what they delivered was a vibrant and entirely unorthodox vision of what dance could sound like. It’s perhaps because of this that the comparatively MOR ‘Love Alight’ is disappointing.

While Crystal Fighters had previously sounded distinctive, ‘Love Alight’ sounds generic.  The EDM influences here are more pronounced and the record sounds like it was designed to demand daytime radio play more than anything else. 

But ‘Love Alight’ has been released as a single and singles are meant to be radio friendly, right?  Well, that may be true but, ironically, ‘Love Alight’ is nowhere to be found on Radio 1’s daytime playlist.  

Whichever way you look at it, it’s hard to escape the feeling that ‘Love Alight’ is a pale imitation of what Crystal Fighters do best. While it isn’t a bad song, it certainly sounds like a band operating well within their comfort zone. Gone are the percussive Basque instruments and in comes a prosaic four-to-the-floor beat. The folk influences are still present but have been subdued markedly.  

What we are left with is something of a damp squib. Rather than channeling the carefree exuberance which had characterised their earlier work, ‘Love Alight’ veers uncomfortably close to bland Euro-pop.

2/5

Alex Wignall