Ocean Colour Scene
may be comfortable within their tradition, but even they recognize the need to shake things up just a bit -- and so they do for their ninth album
Saturday
, hiring
Editors
producer
Gavin Monaghan
to give them a fresh coat of paint. It is not a major refurbishment, just a slight touch-up that does the group considerable good, revitalizing the band's post-
Pepper
foundation. All their trademarks are in place -- in particular, there's no getting
OCS
out of
Traffic
-- but they're clever enough to acknowledge their consistency by having opener
"100 Floors of Perception"
hailing back to
"Hundred Mile High City,"
and spend much of
hitting their British prog-folk influences a little harder, letting
"Mrs. Maylie"
drift into an English garden and flirting with the bombastic on
"Harry Kidnap."
balance these precious inclinations with a ballast straight out of
the Who
at their prime (the closer
"Rockfield"
is a virtual distillation of
Who's Next
), giving
backbone and momentum, making this an elastic, expansive listen, a record with brighter, richer colors than its immediate predecessors. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine