LYLO – Thoughts of Never review

If the three horsemen of career apocalypse go something like take a long hiatus, change your sound and make a concept album, LYLO are at least two and a half notches along the ladder. Finding themselves a three piece around the 2018 release of Post Era, the Glaswegians then went to ground, both as a result of the pandemic shutdown but also because they recognised that their trajectory at that point left them not much room for creative development.

Six years is a lifetime in music, but Thoughts of Never‘s pivot to sounds lodged deeply in the eighties and nineties – lush synth pop, blue eyed soul, a sprinkling of proto R&B – has given them both new avenues of expression and a makeover which has for more potential for joy than that of the past.

Help with the transition comes in the form of The Orielles’ Esmé Dee impossibly slick Hush, whilst The Manager employs spoken word artist alore to voiceover it’s more abstract undertow. Come for that maybe, but stay for the trio’s devotion to period cinematic use of layers and atmosphere, most piquantly on We Move Again, but it’s via the ballad Love In A Way that they surrender completely to their inner retro. It may not make them stars, but in Thoughts of Never‘s bravery and tantalising end product LYLO bear witness to the need to ask and then answer questions of themselves.

You can read a full review here.