Review: Mark Morriss - A Flash of Darkness

I have been listening to this for just over a week and will attempt to give a review of sorts with using one particular word. Can you tell what it is yet.


Acid Jazz present A Flash Of Darkness the second solo album from  Mark Morriss, A Flash of Darkness which first saw light via PledgeMusic and saw 250% of its target met. The album gets a full release on 24 February.

Mark came into most of our lives nigh on twenty years ago in a flurry though in recent years there has been a slight return from the man who ultimately gave us 13 hit singles and 3 top ten albums.

Mark recently supported Shed Seven on their sold out UK Tour, and thats where, acoustically I first got to hear most of these songs. The show at Leeds though was best remembered for his off piste run through the best of Vintage TV. See below for the video I filmed..


But onto ...Darkness... 

Opener A Flash Of Darkness offers a western themed intro but delves into shuffling verses with what a colleague called a melancholy chorus. The lyrics are dry, wry, and that sets a theme for the album.

Time out of the spotlight seems to find Mark in a more reflective frame of mind. The first single - This Is A Lie - while I would not dare suggest is drawn from personal experience shows he is tapping into the ghost of Difford and Tilbrook, that quintessential British self analysis centred as most life is, around relationships. The most immediate track Consuela sees the subject unable to deal with kindness, meaning they just cant run together any more.

Elsewhere we find covers of The Shins' Pink Bullets and an acoustic overhaul of Kavinsky's Nightcall which you might know from the Drive soundtrack.

The voice throughout is unmistakably Mark Morriss apart from perhaps on the verses "Its Hard To Be Good All The Time" despite this being the song that most closely resembles one of those aforementioned hits.

In A Flash Of Darkness, Mark Morriss will please fans and welcome new ones, its a well crafted album packed with melancholic lyrics and earworms a plenty that deserves to be filed in Indie Pop, a genre we hope to see revived in 2014.





A Flash of Darkness, released 24 February.