New music: Hurts – Miracle

The Manchester duo are back with a complicated publicity stunt involving dry cleaners and tape recorders. Oh, and a new song

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Rather than just chuck a "buzz track" online to promote their forthcoming second album Exile (although they did that, too), doom-pop merchants Hurts decided to utilise the oft-ignored tactic of the local dry cleaners as a way of announcing their return. First they posted out old tape recorders to various journalists with a note telling them to await further instructions. Then a letter arrived from Russia made up of old Hurts lyrics stitched together to make a love letter of sorts. Included with the letter was a dry-cleaning receipt, fully paid, which the recipient had to exchange for a black dinner jacket emblazoned with their new logo on the lapel. In the jacket pocket was a gold tape that included bits of songs from the new album. Beat that, Rihanna, with your plane full of exhausted journalists!

Still, no amount of promotional tomfoolery can disguise the fact that Miracle – the first single proper – sounds a lot like Coldplay's Princess of China, all stadium-size "woah, woah, woahs". But while they added some sweetness to the mix with a Rihanna guest vocal, Miracle luxuriates in its stylish melancholia as singer Theo throws out lines such as "the light will never shine on this heart of mine" over a Depeche Mode-esque backdrop of stadium guitars and synths. For the video, the pair roam around a disused shopping centre looking mean and moody as various gothic emblems (a massive crow, a straitjacket, some burning totems) interrupt their sadness.

Exile is released on 11 March.


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