Hurts - Surrender (Japanese Edition) (2015)

Is there a more ridiculous band on the pop landscape today than Manchester’s Hurts? The massive-in-Europe-you-know electro duo have made a career out of a very basic formula: drama+four-to-the-floor beat that stops and drops into big choruses+hair gel+smart suits and single earrings= selling bucket loads in Italy and a cult following. On Surrender, their third album, the pair show no signs of fucking with that formula. They aim at big pop drama, at hooks and drops, at fist-in-the-air moments, and head-in-your-hands ballads. It’s a noble aim, and they’ve got there before, especially on their early singles, so it’s a shame that Surrender fails quite spectacularly. Never has such drama been so, so boring. Rarely has such sturm and drang felt so unremarkable.