Warpaint – Radiate Like This

While Radiate Like This is a solid return for Warpaint, it's likely to leave some wanting more

Album Review by Ryan Drever | 06 May 2022
  • Warpaint – Radiate Like This
Album title: Radiate Like This
Artist: Warpaint
Label: Virgin
Release date: 6 May

Written mostly separately, in various different cities, the process for creating Radiate Like This – Warpaint’s first album in six years – allowed the group to take considerably more time putting it together. That lack of urgency appears to have imbued the resulting effort with a real sense of space and a sort of contented confidence in taking things slow.

It's a feeling first embodied by opening track Champion, which eases casually into being like a lazy morning sunrise before riding out on a palatable mid-paced groove, setting a considerably laid-back pace and tone along the way which runs deep throughout the rest of the album. Hips is a notable exception with a more familiar mix of skittish offbeat rhythms and icy flashes of harmony which plays to the LA group's more experimental tendencies, and their general (and wonderful) weirdness.

However, the remaining tracks here mostly maintain a more slow and steady pace. It allows tracks like Melting and Altar to breathe and build on their utterly lush choral leanings, but generally speaking, while it's a solid return for the group, it's likely to leave some wanting more, aching for some real catharsis or a change of gear here and there.

Listen to: Hips, Melting, Trouble

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