Album Review: The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You

All too often The Avalanches seem to exist in the shadow of their acclaimed debut album Since I Left You, but that was 20 years ago. While they haven’t been especially prolific in all this time, the Melbourne-based outfit have dropped their third album. Produced over the past four years, We Will Always Love You takes inspiration from Ann Druyan, her relationship with Carl Sagan and work co-ordinating the Voyager Golden Records as a starting point for this record. It is anyone’s guess what aliens will make of the recordings Druyan sent into the depths of space, but The Avalanches take this inspiration to deliver an album of soft grooves that smoothly glides through the cosmos.

This album’s hazy and sampled vibe has been designed to sound like a broadcast from a distant planet Earth. These short pop songs are glued together by electronic instrumentals and makes them sound like someone impatiently flipping radio stations. While the outfit still sample, everything from field recordings to the jaw dropping array of guest artists, it all feels as though they have been sampled from rare records. Somehow the likes of Mick Jones, Johnny Marr, Tricky, Vashti Bunyan, Cornelius, Neneh Cherry, Kurt Vile, Sampa The Great, Leon Bridges and many, many more are brought together for guest spots to stunning effect. While each guest brings something unique to the mix, The Avalanches have produced a collection of songs that bristle with emotion and quite soulfully pushes out deeply positive messages of love and hope.