The Magic Numbers are warmer and cosier than a cat asleep on a radiator. But behind the matching fringes, shuffling guitars and brother-sister harmonies, ‘Forever Lost’ also has a real beating heart.
For all this song’s gentle melancholy, it’s played hard enough to make words like 'wistful' seem flouncy and inadequate. It’s just too confident to be twee. They even get away with stealing the Phil Spector bayon rhythm (the posh term for the dum-de dum dum bit in the bridges) and make it sound like it was their idea in the first place.
If the mark of a great record is that you can cry to it and dance to it, then this must be one.
-
10Julian Ridgway's Score