Rialto were a chart-topping, double-Platinum success in SE Asia and a highly acclaimed cult concern in the UK, but undoubtedly a band ahead of their aesthetic time. Following a second album Night on Earth in 2001 the band split and Eliot spread his wings. He became a regular collaborator with Grace Jones and Supergrass’s Danny Goffey; as a songwriter his credits included the Ivor Novello winning ‘Leave Right Now’ for Will Young; he released a 2004 solo album and “a very rural sounding record” as Louis Eliot And The Embers in 2010, and developed the 8,000 capacity Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall.
Rialto release their first new album in 24 years. In this sordid clubland mode, ‘Neon & Ghost Signs’ opens with ‘No One Leaves This Discoteque Alive’. Eliot casting himself as ‘the hound of London town, where the sheets are stained with gold’ in a lascivious Brel growl, out to ‘lose my head’ and find love ‘in a perfect storm’. It’s a nocturnal party prowl that the album pursues with a passion.
