2.5
The new incarnation of London trio White Lies attempts to recall the darker side of UK post-punk, in the merging of dark church organs and overwrought synths with a thundering backdrop of bass. A brooding Harry McVeigh recalls his adolescence with aching desolation; ghoulish murder tales and allegories are underscored with the most dramatic of their compositions, as a frozen apocalypse catapults us far into the depths of disco.
‘I love the feeling when we lift off/ Watching the world so small below/ I love the dreaming when I think of/ The safety in the clouds out my window’ chides the tortured Brit with a dreamlike stupor on ‘Death,’ summoning us into his chilling nightmare.
Raw instrumentation is soon swapped for the slick production on title track ‘To Lose My Life,’ with a sparkling reverb lending the London trio a hollow industrialism. The title track shakes with doom, gloom and swirling, razor-sharp guitars, unabashedly borrowing from contemporaries in the likes of the Editors, Franz Ferdinand and the Killers. By the halfway mark, the trio’s repeated crescendos start to grind a little too formulaic, a subdued tension always on the cusp of spilling over into unadulterated revelation, but never quite achieving that release. The finales predictably buzz with moody, wistful synths and crashing drums.
The one exception to the torment is ‘Unfinished Business.’ Sunnily strumming to an upbeat, tightly wound thump, McVeigh menacingly demands, ‘Get off your low/ Let’s dance like we used to.’ But even where White Lies try to pick up the pace, they certainly leave unfinished business in refining their brand beyond the ease of emulation.