Closer to Grey

With Closer to Grey, the group have created a near-perfect piece of 21st century pop escapism. So, the next time world’s weighing you down, you know what to do. Reach for your turntable. Chromatics have got your back.

Closer to Grey is the coldest, shiniest, most polished collection of songs released under the Chromatics banner. It’s chillier, darker and more sinister than anything else they’ve ever put out.

Closer To Grey feels more polished and shimmering, and with only 12 tracks and a compact 45 minutes, it’s considerably shorter than the expansive, sometimes daunting records it followeds (Kill For Love clocked in at 16 songs over an hour, 17 minutes). As an entryway into the Italians Do It Better universe, it feels enticing, welcoming even.

This is world weary pop, but it’s completely uncynical. Reserved and melodramatic at the same time, it doesn’t worry about the incongruities, satisfied to be both wilted and very alive.

Their music is timeless but pulls on nostalgic heartstrings—it can be goth, earnest, sad, happy, distant and close all at once. It scratches a very specific itch for atmospheric pop and rock music that most of their imitators still can't touch.

The charm of Chromatics has always been their ability to create musical pastiche that winks at parody, but is so thoroughly and consistently within a world of their own redecoration that authenticity is never an issue. With Closer to Grey they've managed to harness the full energy from their chill fusion into their most ornately framed creation yet.

Closer to Grey is another haunting synth-pop house of mirrors that transcends the nostalgia of the Chromatics’s prior work.

A dozen fully formed analog dance tracks into 45 minutes of synth-driven cruising music. ... On “Touch Red,” a distant beat and a few well-chosen keyboard chords offer a monochromatic background onto which Radelet sings, “Touch red, the world needs color.” The shock of luminosity is jarring. Like a rose blossoming in a field blackened by wildfire, it’s one of many moments on the record that capture in equal measure both beauty and bleakness.

So whilst Closer to Grey may not have been the album many had been anticipating, and despite it feeling like a stop-gap, there is certainly much to admire here.

It’s the next sonic chapter in Chromatics’ dramatic novel. With incredible growling synths and Johnny Jewel’s undeniably fantastic, experimental production elements, Closer to Grey is the unexpected sonic growth spurt we didn’t see coming from Chromatics.

Their most modest record to date. Think of Closer to Grey as an auteur’s niche art project—satisfying to the superfans, though not necessarily winning over new ones.

Dear Tommy may still be lost in the ether, and who knows when Jewel decides to complete it. But Closer to Grey feels like a fully-fleshed concept, and it should be considered the long-awaited follow-up to Kill for Love fans have been clamoring for for years.