It’s been a long time coming but Van Houten have finally released their debut album The Tallest Room (March 2024).

The band point out that their ‘first’ debut 12 inch vinyl Van Houten was released at a different time (2019) with a different line up, and may perhaps be better considered to be a debut EP. As it’s an artist’s perogative to reflect upon their work, I’m not quibbling.

The Tallest Room took me some digesting and I’ve been playing it all week. In the process I have been steadily moving my view from ‘slightly disappointed’ to ‘understated triumph’. The Tallest Room is one of those albums well worth getting to know. In classic Van Houten style, the music is heavy on melody and intricate repeated psyche hook lines, and with shoegaze vocals which add a downbeat, understated counterpane.

Heck this week, I’ve even been mulling over the difference between ‘tallest room’ and ‘highest room’… is it a room that would need a lot of wallpaper and a very big ladder because of its sheer space from floor to ceiling, or is it a standard shaped room but a long way off the ground? I clearly spent too much of my youth in fragrant smoke filled rooms, dear reader. Gentle but deeply unsettled track Panoramic View contains the reference to the tallest room on the album, so that song title might give a clue. Panoramic View has a nice gentle melodic flow but those lyrics give tell to never feeling content, which is an unnerving thought.

The band say the album is about growth and development so to aspire to a tall room fits the vibe.

It’s the more soulful and painful tunes laden with rhythm and musical patterns which I’m growing to love. Take the majesty of the closing track I Let You, it feels like an aural version of secret garden where there are blooms and intricate patterns of nature, branches, leaves and dragon flies around every corner. There’s such a simple but beautiful hook line, you can imagine the band’s eureka moment when this line suddenly shone through. This is a leisurely well paced 8 minute tour.

The understated vocals on I Let You just accentuate that rhythm line with a faint whisper breeze rather than subsume it. This lyrical wind is fresh, as the lyrics chill to the bone. A love who just leaves without regret, leaving the other party cut to the quick. Both beautiful and desolate.

It’s not all hard, Only Wanna Be With You is a fuzzy, grungy, country tinged masterpiece. Opening track Black and White is more dark than light though, with a sound which kind of reminds me of the pomp of 1980’s The Cult, with a tinge of Norwegian Wood sound from the east. This could be the long lost 12 inch extended version of Spiritwalker, but the vocals take it in a 60’s Jethro Tull phyche direction, before bringing in a nicely fuzzy and chaotic close.

Coming of Age is a nicely upbeat tune with lyrics which could reflect impatience with the slow gestation period of Van Houten, and that the time to speak out is now.

So hold back the door on all your self obsessive thoughts
They’ll find you and blind you for good
Our time is short so don’t waste a second more
The silence that hides us is gone

Note to Self follows on into that theme of not having time to lose, and it’s time to get out there and try. I guess there’s that same sense that runs through our lives whatever age we are. Or, if we are lucky enough to not let live slip by.

Overall with The Tallest Room, I get such a sense of space, distance and development with this album; a tall room indeed, and as big and as grand as the Chamber of the Grand Council in Venice’s Doge’s Palace. This is a band conscious of the passage of time, of lost love, and that now is their time, our time.

An epic production, The Tallest Room may yet end up to be my album of 2024.

* words by Tiggerligger

* images from the band’s socials