Album Review - Flyte: This Is Really Going To Hurt

Four years on from a timeless debut album, Flyte return with a record of disarming post-breakup introspection...

The lead singer pours his heart into music to get over his ex - we know the score. Maybe, after death and taxes, it should occupy the third spot on the list. It’s a dependable formula to combat grief, the auditory equivalent to licking your wounds.

The very nature of the album, being a 10-track accessory to the break up of frontman Will Taylor’s eight-year relationship, means that the band were afforded the luxury of dodging that dig for gold as they pondered the difficult second album. Instead, here it was, a ribbon-tied, teary-eyed concept album.

But that’s not to suggest that simply being heartbroken and needing new music is a recipe for a great album. There feels like more at play here. There’s a sense of horizons being broadened and soundscapes being expanded simultaneously thanks to an LA setting and production from Andro Sarlo and Justin Raisen, responsible for Bon Iver and Angel Olsen respectively.

“This Is Really Going To Hurt” is Flyte at their most vulnerable, shedding their skin from an ex-girlfriend as well as an ex-bandmate. This is a wonderfully poignant expression of someone trying to pull themselves together again, caught halfway between the gutter and the stars.

Prelude “Easy Tiger” is soaked in anguish and is personified in a haunting guitar loop and anxious lyrics: “Find your new man a matching outfit…post a picture so I know…”. It’s brooding and slow burns before it seamlessly swirls into something more foreboding. What follows feels softer by comparison.

“Losing You” is wistful, gentle and folksy, orchestrated by an acoustic guitar and it’s the most obvious example on the record of Taylor at his most raw, yearning for the return of his lover, despite both trying to move on with new people. A camp-fire love song designed to cut you deep, that is until the centrepiece of the album “Everyone’s A Winner” arrives to not only punch you in the gut but throw you to the ground and leave you soaking in the rain. It’s one of the most heartbreaking songs you’ll likely hear this year.

While there’s a clear sense of new ground being trodden, of a new musical landscape being forged for themselves, “This Is Really Going To Hurt” is also a body of work that nods to the past. “Trying To Break Your Heart”, despite its subject matter, is the most carefree, euphoric moment on the record, with the group’s gift for melody on full display. There’s a haziness to the song’s hook which bears an uncanny resemblance to both George Harrison and Tommy James, acting as a fusion project of “If Not For You” and a jacked-up “Crimson and Clover”. The ghosts of Crosby, Stills and Nash haunt “There’s a Woman” whilst “Mistress America” is this era’s “Mrs Robinson”.

Despite all this, the band offer enough in the way of originality when it comes to their songwriting and their famed harmonies for these moments to merely feel like trips down memory lane as opposed to permanent residency in the late ’60s.

This is a beautifully crafted response to the first album. Who knew heartbreak could sound so good?