Lighthouse Family - Blue Sky In Your Head

The Guardian 60

(Polydor)
The duo’s first album for two decades adds a global scope to their old blueprint – and occasionally alights on euphoria

After forming in Newcastle in the early 1990s, the Lighthouse Family shifted 10m records of wistful-euphoric soul to a vast constituency that ranged from nu-soul purists to Mondeo man. Having recently reunited, the duo don’t stray far from the original blueprint for their first album in 18 years.

Blue Sky In Your Head is full of trademark gently aspirational, universal anthems, crafted around Paul Tucker’s big piano and Tunde Baiyewu’s quietly yearning vocals. In the opening title track, the singer dreams of a “different life when trouble just goes away” – almost exactly the same sentiments to those that fired their megahit Lifted in 1996.