Three years on from Boxer and it's easy to forget that this band makes albums that grow on you slowly; albums that reveal a little more with each listen until eventually your dreams start to act out the lyrics, and you find subconscious snippets providing a sublime soundtrack to internal monologues as you toil through your day.
The disappointment some may have felt with the first single 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' will be dissolved after living with the album. This record is much more direct, and has greater momentum—it's more confident than Boxer was, but the moody incandescence of that album is no longer as thick. Not to worry.
As usual, Matt Berninger's lyrics are largely responsible for the lingering resonance of the beautifully realised songs and the album's success. They sink into your skin and end up tugging patiently at the fabric of your very being. He really does have a way with them.
"It's a terrible love, and I'm walkin' with spiders / It's a terrible love and I'm walkin' in / this quiet company..." he intimates over a gauzy guitar at the outset of 'Terrible Love', as the aural palette blossoms into cavernous exultance, a quilt of mellotron, cymbals, guitars; "It takes an ocean not to break."
Later, "I guess I've always been a delicate man / It takes me a day to remember a day / I didn't mean to let it get so far out of hand"
High Violet's song cycle starts with a tangle of anxiety and despair, alone in the negative space of a lost intimacy. It resolves triumphant.
In truth, it's almost as heady and hackle-raising as it's superior predecessor. But don't worry, it's a stunner.
published 19/04/10 in The Brag
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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