D:Ream’s famous – dare we say infamous? – classic, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, has a habit of coming up for air when the nation needs it most. This time round it became a pandemic anthem, blasted out through the streets of Nottingham as a thank you to the front line NHS workers to whom we owe everything. But let’s put that to one side for a minute, because D:Ream have some other business we need to attend to.
Namely, their first new material over a decade. Open Hearts, Open Minds is a return to the dance sensibilities of their early greats – we mentioned ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, but let’s throw ‘U R The Best Thing’ and ‘Shoot Me With Your Love’ into the mix – and it gets off to an upliftingly solid start with lead single ‘Meet Me At Midnight’, a cracking, crazy-catchy retro-house tune that you won’t be able to get out of your head – in a good way!
It’s been well over a ten years since we last heard from Pete Cunnah and Al Mackenzie, but the timing couldn’t be more perfect. After the year – some might say decade! – we’ve had, the joy of a D:Ream production is just the tonic we’re craving.