Disclosure

Disclosure’s debut album was a massive success, and in more ways than one. Not only did it take the charts by storm, inciting a new wave of electronic-inspired pop music in the process, it did so by paying homage to the golden age of house music - it was as if late-1980s Chicago packed up and moved to early-2010s London. The duo of Howard and Guy Lawrence faced a new challenge with Caracal, their sophomore album - with one foot in the underground and one foot firmly in the contemporary pop scene, Disclosure were seemingly faced with a dilemma. This expressed itself in the singles leading up to this album - “Bang That” was a crude, while album singles “Holding On” and “Omen” both felt rather like a retread of Settle’s poppier hits. However,
Caracal in its entirety is a different beast altogether - rather than going in a more accessible or more underground direction, Disclosure have forged their own unique path, crafting an album of wonky, diverse dance tracks that defy any specific labels. Crucially, they retain their skill for crafting albums over singles, and crucially, their guests on this record are no worse than the voices used on Settle. Caracal is a worthy follow up to Disclosure’s ambitious debut; while it may not be memorable, it’s extremely enjoyable.

The stripped house sound that populated a good chunk of Settle is almost completely gone on this record - skeletal tracks like “When A Fire Starts To Burn” and “White Noise” have no counterparts here.
Instead, we get sprawling, summery tracks, with dialed-down BPMs and an extra focus on atmosphere. The entrancing, The Weeknd-featuring opener “Nocturnal” is a brilliant starting point, picking up right where Settle’s closer “Help Me Lose My Mind” left off. It’s one of the high points of the record, and it perfectly sets the mood for an album that might be most enjoyable as the sun sets on a summer
evening.

As for the album’s numerous singles, they mesh together surprisingly well to form the record’s first half. The art of the album is one that escapes many electronic artists, but not these two - Caracal smartly and naturally progresses, from the laconic “Nocturnal” to the upbeat “Holding On”, with “Omen”’s summery shuffle in between to help the transition. This intelligent track listing greatly improves the overall feel of the album, turning disappointing singles into vital pieces of a greater entity. The changes are seamless for most of the album - “Holding On” into the brilliantly pulsing “Hourglass”, into the more soulful “Willing & Able” - they are perhaps the largest reason that Caracal is so damn enjoyable as a full length album.

This overall coherence gives Disclosure the freedom to explore various musical styles without giving the album too much of a cluttered feel, and they do this with aplomb.
The group experiments quite a bit with summery synths; it’s only fitting that the likes of Miguel and Nao are tapped to provide correspondingly summery vocals. Other collaborators provide even more captivating vocals: Lorde, especially, is impressively sleek on top of “Magnets”, one of the album’s silkiest tracks. When Disclosure do decide to bump up the BPM, the results are even better: “Echoes” is a late highlight, with Guy Lawrence’s vocals bonding well with the synths’ addictive parallel harmonies.

Caracal is, admittedly, nowhere near as groundbreaking as its predecessor, at least in terms of progressive pop ideas. In fact, it borrows heavily from modern pop music - while Settle inspired a whole new wave of house-inspired pop music, Caracal takes inspiration from those derivatives, putting its own stamp on the movement in the process. Whatever expectations may have been for Disclosure’s sophomore album, Caracal is a great effort at meeting them. Not only can Disclosure write a mean song, their approach to their music remains ahead of the curve, in a way: in Caracal, they’ve crafted another brilliant
Album.