The seventh studio long-player from the stalwart English alt-rock outfit, the aptly named
Love Is a Basic Need serves up ten expertly crafted specimens of
Coldplay-era Brit-pop that invoke the highs and lows of devotion. Leaving behind the electronic flourishes of their eponymous 2014 reboot, it's tempting to call the album a return to
Embrace's late-'90s roots. While there's no denying the stadium-sized grandiosity of midtempo, butane lighter-ready power ballads like "Wake Up Call," "Never," and the soaring, "Hey Jude"-aping title track,
Love Is a Basic Need has more in common with the band's 2004 comeback LP
Out of Nothing, which featured the slow-burning Chris Martin (
Coldplay)-penned hit "Gravity," than it does the nosebleed seat-bating, guitar-driven
U2-isms that propelled their 1998 debut into the stratosphere. Still, it's good to hear
Embrace playing to their strengths again, and despite its architectural and lyrical mundanity,
Love Is a Basic Need succeeds, more than a few times, in sonically replicating the arm-hair-raising rush of amour. ~ James Christopher Monger