Corella - A Beautiful World To Lose

Plenty of bark, but lacking in bite.

After two years of work after the release of their debut album Once Upon A Weekend, Manchester four-piece Corella return on September 18th with their sophomore work, A Beautiful World To Lose. The album’s ten tracks are well-made and largely high-energy, but it feels like something is missing.

As mentioned, the production of the record is of high quality – Grammy winner Jason Perry, with work with acts like McFly and Don Broco on his CV, does an excellent job making the instrumentals work. The tones of the instruments are excellent, meaty and driven; this especially applies to the guitars, but the bass is another major standout, especially on tracks like “Simple Life”. 

The composition of the songs themselves is also really solid. The album kicks right off on an energetic note with “Rewire”, and almost doesn’t drop the intensity throughout most of the tracklist. “Bitter End”, “Jump Scare” and especially the second half of “All I Want” with its spiralling guitar solo all have very well-constructed instrumentals. However, while the foundations are very much solid, things do get rather generic as the album goes on. There are cool guitar moments, but the songs slip dangerously into “car commercial music” territory at times.

Lyrically, the intentions are definitely there. The topical matter that the band covers is compelling and quite universal – loss, frustration, disillusionment and other similar themes all too relevant in today’s world. However, the writing unfortunately suffers from a similar issue to the instrumentation – while it is far from downright bad, it isn’t particularly unique. When handling topics such as the ones that appear on this record, it’s important to do so in a memorable, distinct way, and this album takes things rather too generally for that. The vocal deliveries on certain tracks also feel a little too intense in a way that makes the album feel like it’s taking itself a little too seriously. 

Overall, A Beautiful World To Lose is a fun album to listen to, but not one worth too many re-listens. Corella are clearly a talented band with plenty of potential, but there’s still more work to do when it comes to honing their identity and unique sonic profile, as well as refining their lyrical style and being more specific and focused when it comes to their writing.

6.0/10