Nizlopi’s debut, “Half These Songs Are About You,” sketches Luke Concannon’s battle with a hard case of “lovesickness.” The album begins strong with “Fine Story,” and then is gently swooned by an insatiable infatuation present in “Girls,” further progressing in similar oscillations. The fray is thick in Concannon’s reverberating pipes, and his sultry guitar peals mind as well be the agonizing chime of his plucked heartstrings.
The album eventually settles in the solace of the remaining tracks, “Wash Away,” and “Worry.”
The Leamington Spa natives’ second stab, “Make It Happen,” is not the resurrection of lovelorn days, but a new and complete invigoration of without so much as a backward glance to “Half These Songs…”. Even its sappier songs, such as “Drop Your Guard,” sing motifs of new beginnings.
“Make It Happen” starts in a blastoff with “Start Beginning,” a punch-packed pick-me-up “about spring time and the reawakening of the soul” (even incorporating the London’s IDMC Gospel choir) that sets the brazen pace following through the album’s entirety: “Hello my love/ It’s good to see you/ Shining with the freshness of arrival/ And I see your beauty/ Standing there before me/ And I wonder when we will/ Start this love/ ‘Cos we can start beginning in our hearts beginning/ Wo oh, blooming’ out from all that shit you went through.”
John Parker’s double bass craft shuffles to the forefront of the songs with striking dexterity, coloring in the sense of elation in “Find Me,” a track composed with a buoyancy similar to Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” His beatbox also becomes a familiar instrument. Absent from their debut, Parker incorporated his nearly “one man band” skill in their live performances, received as a light that need be covered no longer for their next record.
Concannon’s passion is divided between bursting, undaunted romance and preachy, rapping bellows for an England reformation, or up rise: less poverty, more generosity; less government, more community. It sounds like a fluffy utopia most could settle with.
Beyond lyrics, Concannon’s jubilation restricts his vocal range that used to mingle up and down the scales in “Half These Songs…” His pitched fixes high, acute in some parts, shrill in others, but still emitted in a splendid touch.
“Make It Happen” suffers only at the hands of Nizlopi’s created monster: their live shows. Like Dave Matthew’s Band, their studio releases are mere shadows of what they can do onstage, but this shouldn’t make their record any less worthy.
It just means that a studio cannot capture the great aura radiating from Nizlopi, but “Make It Happen” is still a decent fulfillment of its own album title.
