Review Summary: Peter Comfy.
It took Peter Murphy a couple of albums to figure out his style properly, but his creative searching that lasted for the whole tail end of the eighties resulted in some precious findings, from memorable pop tunes to masterful forays into lesser-known territories. But “Holy Smoke” finds Peter settled perhaps too cozily in his niche. His previous albums, with all their strengths and weaknesses, found him reaching out and exploring, but here Peter Murphy is clearly having a breather.
It’s not that all the songs are slow, but rather that they are not in a hurry. Peter is clearly in a peaceful mood: he’s singing a lot about love and romance, and the bulk of the songs are treading on familiar grounds. They are either based on throbbing bass lines and synth melodies reminiscent of “All Night Long” from Murphy’s second LP or built around guitar riffs similar to “Deep Ocean, Vast Sea” from his previous outing. “Low Room” is the only attempt to use the guitar in a more unusual way, and I’m not sure it works. The only mild surprise comes with “Let Me Love You,” for instead of a sappy ballad that you would expect with a title like that, it opens with a sinister guitar melody and equally unsettling synths akin to some evil cicadas. But the vibe is kinda killed by the chorus, which sounds
exactly as saccharine as you would expect from a song with a title like that. The song also ends very abruptly. I mean, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, stop. That’s it.
“That’s it?” some of you might ask when the album is over. Then again, if you like Peter Murphy’s early sound in general, this streamlined version of it might be just enough. The album’s vibe overall reminds me of “Lightworks” by Devin Townsend. In both cases, we are talking about well-crafted works that are fun to listen to while they’re on, but leave an impression of their authors being capable of much more.
The good news is that while “Holy Smoke” definitely exhibits complacency akin to Devin Townsend’s “Lightworks,” it never reaches the toothlessness of Devin Townsend’s “Snuggles.”
