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It is rumored that Hurts have signed a disproportionate for the current market and with huge promotional investments. Not having yet achieved the goals expected at home, have focused on continental Europe, especially in the east, where, according to the accounts in the interviews, are treated as rock stars. All this seems hardly compatible with the video of the beginning, almost amateurish, but very refined: in 2009, the duo was an innovative niche that carried with it an opera singer and said he was inspired by the "slow disk" (a kind post- Italo disco of the early '90s - but they could also esserselo invented since there is no trace online). The debut album of 2010 had enriched their initial sounds to make them perhaps more appealing to the general public, but remained under the new, bombastic arrangements, a handful of exceptional songs ("Illuminated" at all).
With Exile, unfortunately, Hurts continue to magnify their sound in hopes to bring in the arenas and forgetting that it was the minimalism makes them so interesting. In many passages, the models and the duo's ambitions are clear: to combine the style of Depeche Mode, the sentiment of Coldplay and the credibility of the Muses. It is almost impossible not to find immediate references for each track on the album - not only to the three groups mentioned above (respectively, "Cupid", "Miracle" and "Mercy"), but also to Massive Attack "Angel" in the bottom half of "The road" or of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" in "The Crow". Even the most experimental track, "Sandman", passes for've heard when he enters the GarageBand loops used by Rihanna in "Umbrella".
This variety in the quotations that are never in the pop a crime if exploited well, but has no effect on the variety of the album: Exile sounds rather monotonous and is not helped by the texts or cloying faux-Gothic. The result is sleek and very well packaged, but lacks the personality and taste that Hurts sported before the delusions of grandeur would take over.
TRACKLIST:
"Exile"
"Miracle"
"Sandman"
"Blind"
"Only you"
"The road"
"Cupid"
"Mercy"
"The crow"
"Somebody to die for"
"The rope"
"Help"
