Hear Me Out: ‘Skying’ by The Horrors is a perfect drug album
The list of perfect drug albums is vast, spanning from the surreal space rock of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to Sleep’s thunderous, weed-drenched opus, Dopesmoker. Many factors qualify a record as the perfect accompaniment to taking drugs, from its sonic texture to its packaging, and they suit situations ranging from kicking back with a joint to tripping out in the great outdoors. Yet, we all know one when we hear it. While this richly populated category encompasses nearly every genre, one album is often overlooked: Skying by The Horrors.
Given that the band are releasing their long-awaited sixth album, Night Life in 2025, which features a slightly different line-up from the classic one that last appeared on 2017’s V, there’s no better time to revisit the 2011 record. Not only was it a favourite of a generation and part of the backing track of that heady period that lasted from the summer of 2011 to its 2014 counterpart, but it also soundtracked many early adults’ formative experiences on narcotics and also played a key role in their younger peers taking their first steps into weed, MDMA and the rest.
It seems that Skying was always destined to be deemed a drug album. After all, bassist Rhys Webb told the NME in 2011: “It was massively inspired by taking loads of pills, loads of ecstasy. We want to make music that people enjoy and lose themselves in. You can listen in any situation. It can just be waking up in the morning and sticking a record on. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you’re doing, the thing we like is trying to take you somewhere else. To remove you from wherever you are.”
The record certainly triumphs in whisking the listener away from the present and taking them to a place filled with intangible visions, nostalgia and other all-encompassing head-rushes. It also fulfils the band’s aims in that it is fit for myriad situations that don’t even have to be drug-fuelled, such as lying in the park on your own on a sunny day, locked in pure tranquillity.
Interestingly, in another interview, Horrors synth maestro Tom Furse explained that the title, Skying – a perfect fit for the sonic resplendence of the album – had nothing to do with drugs. He revealed that the word came from an Australasian psychedelic compilation, and its use was an early term for tape flanging and phasing. However, despite the technical meaning of the word, he was in no doubt it was used on that peculiar record because it sounded like a plane taking off. Accordingly, the word and sound made an impression on him, and he thought it prompted fitting mental imagery when the band had produced their own heady masterpiece.
Clearly, then, Skying has a firm psychedelic grounding, which is heightened by the hazy imagery of the front cover. Featuring a trippy photograph of the sun breaking through a cluster of clouds above the ocean, shining down on the calm water, this was a perfect way to tie together a collection of ten tracks that ebb and flow like waves, calmly kneading the sand.
The songs themselves are the foundation of it all. Sequenced perfectly, the record is a convergence of nostalgic-sounding 1980s synths, bubbling arpeggios, Joshua Hawyard’s kaleidoscopic shoegazing guitar, Webb’s warm basslines – the glue for the rest of the elements – and Faris Badwan’s textural vocals and intensely visual lyrics.
Kicking off with the sunny groove of ‘Changing the Rain’, the band set a precedent from the start. The music is so alluring and cinematic that you cannot help but be pulled in. This is followed by one of the most melodically arresting moments included in ‘You Said’, which heightens the feeling of being stoned, unconcerned, and abroad, and Skying continues to build accordingly.
The third track is ‘I Can See Through You’, which fuses psychedelia, glam rock and shoegaze into one of the most driving and energising cuts on the album. Then, in one of the most neglected moments in the band’s oeuvre, ‘Endless Blue’ enters the fold, opening with a tranquil, hypnotic equilibrium perched on Webb’s bassline before Hayward’s searing guitar cuts through the mix and plunges you further into this hypnosis.
This is only the beginning of the album, too, with so many oscillations and emotions to be uncovered, and the likes of ‘Dive In’, ‘Still Life’, and the masterwork ‘Moving Further Away’ beckoning on the horizon. Sounds like a treat, doesn’t it? Dive in.
