Temples – ‘Bliss’ album review: Forget what you know, and suffer the consequences
Scratch your head long enough, squint your eyes until you start seeing dots, and try your absolute hardest to summon a hazy recollection of Temples, the Kettering band who were once being touted as the future of British psychedelic rock. Getting anything yet? Good, now try to forget about that completely.
The Skinny: While this pieced-together memory might be telling you that the reason they’ve become a shadowy spectre of faddish indie permutations past was that there was nothing to be hyped about in the first place, in reality, Temples were perhaps genuinely unfortunate to have arisen at the wrong time. Debut album Sun Structures came out after Tame Impala had already notched up two full-length records, and such timing was only ever going to earn frontman James Bagshaw comparisons to Aussie counterpart Kevin Parker.
The trouble is, this dismissive attitude overlooked the fact that Temples were, if my own memories are serving me right, actually very competent songwriters themselves, and had plenty about themselves that was deserving of more than lazy comparisons. However, because fickle listeners had already made their minds up that they didn’t have the capacity to invite another similarly-minded band into their sphere, the stocks that Temples had in indie clout began to shrivel, with every subsequent album receiving less attention.
Evidently frustrated at the fact that four albums in, their fortunes had only dwindled, they’ve changed tack in a remarkable way for album number five, Bliss, hoping that making something that separates them from the contemporaries they’d previously been aligned with would lead to a marked increase in attention. However, what Bliss fails to recognise is that they weren’t doing anything wrong, and in their effort to reinvent themselves, they’ve made a pitifully uninspired pastiche of indie dance that limps its way across the sticky club floors of 2007.
Melody and inventive chord progressions were seemingly Bagshaw’s strong points over the course of their first period, with texture being used as a smart way to bolster said strengths. Bliss has no melody whatsoever and gets bored by its own tediousness by the time the first chorus rolls around, if choruses are even possible to distinguish from the rest of the song.
What you have in place of them are hollow attempts at being anthemic that are punctuated with grating digitised guitar effects, drab 4/4 drum beats and the most insipid Ministry of Sound synth lines being used as gaudy decoration.
On top of poor production choices, the mixing is perhaps the most egregious and infuriating aspect of the record, with every element being blasted to its capacity rather than subtly layered. If there was one major flaw in the earlier work of Temples, it was that the mixing suffered from the opposite effect, where some of the more intricate details were left buried, only able to be heard by the sharpest of ears who were fortunate enough to pick them out. Bliss is, unfortunately, so proud of its obnoxiousness that it bellows out its most abject qualities.
Standout Track: ‘Megalith’
The Verdict: After years of being unfairly derided as a second-rate Tame Impala, Temples have decided to make the sorry mistake of pivoting to shitty Daft Punk knockoffs. Unfortunately for them, Tame Impala also got there first.
Release Date: June 26th, 2026 | Producer: Temples | Label: V2
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