Album review: Higher Power – There’s Love In This World If You Want It

For years, it’s felt like Higher Power have been creaking under the weight of hype. Around the release of 2020’s excellent, Gil Norton-produced second album 27 Miles Underwater, bandwagon-chasing observers proclaimed their alt-infused hardcore the UK’s answer to stateside heavyweights Turnstile. But when that record failed to emulate the Baltimore fashionistas’ mainstream-cracking success it became unclear where they had left to go next. Half a decade down the line, the Leeds lads have finally found their way.

There’s Love In This World If You Want It doesn’t feel so much like a continuation of what’s come before as a subtle reinvention. It’s understandable. Another half decade on the clock has honed their abilities as players and solidified their understanding of the music they want to make. Much has happened in the interim, with everything from COVID’s almighty rug-pull to a litany of personal travails (including keystone guitarist deciding to Louis Hardy leave, then rejoin the band) writ large in songs like All The Rage and Count The Miles. And although the three singles dropped in the interim – 2021’s Fall From Grace, 2024’s Absolute Bloom and Stillpoint – teased a melodic evolution, it’s still startling to wholly behold.

Absolute Bloom is the only of those singles to make TLITWIYWI’s nine-song cut, opening proceedings in breezy, low-key fashion. Understated as it seemed as a standalone release, it’s the perfect gateway here. Fuzzy alt. influence has taken over, largely, with an overload of keenly felt emotion, hazy atmospherics and unashamed Northern Englishness.

Better is a massive sing-along, built around sheer hooky weirdness: arguably the best song to which they’ve put their name. Lunar Tuesday matches it with a gloriously spacey explosion, charting a journey of self-realisation as well as one to the stars. Landing mid-album, Two Doors Down is by far the heaviest track on offer, but it comes on as a slab of cold catharsis rather than any kind of tokenistic pandering to the scene that spawned them, owing more to the sheet-metal heft of ’90s heroes Hemet than any of HP’s spin-kicking contemporaries.

Not that there’s any lack of energy. Racing by in a sun-dappled blur, this is a record that refuses to overstay its welcome. Yet it’s one that fans will want to cling to, with no lack of detail for those willing to scratch the surface, from Leeds artist George Addy’s fabulous artwork to the uncredited cameo from Basement’s Andrew Fisher on Kaleidoscope and a leftfield sample from The Black Crowes’ 1991 live album baked into Wide Awake.

With frontman Jimmy Wizard having admitted there’s no plan to take these songs on tour, let alone for what comes next, there is a sense of poignant uncertainty by the time they reach cello-infused closer My Sweet Surrender. Under its soul-swelling glow, however, it would be a real pity for Higher Power not to push on. Because no matter how ‘big’ they are in 2025, they’ve never sounded better.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Smashing Pumpkins, Basement, Helmet

There's Love In This World If You Want It is out now via Nuclear Blast