White Lies

To Lose My Life

(Geffen)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

Before I heard this band, I had heard of this band. I wasn’t sure if I should even bother, knowing that too many times the music will just not live up to the hype. The constant references to bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division, and the Teardrop Explodes kept on coming though, so I figured, why not. At best – it would be something great, at worst, just another lame rip-off.

So here it goes, slide the CD into the player, press play, and it hits like instant lust. Hard, deep, and full. The first song gets right into my pulse, my heart, before the first few bars are even complete. Yeah, I hear it – Echo & the Bunnymen, but it’s there as an undercurrent, an inspiration, not an influence. The drums hit stadium huge and pulsating anthemic under oceansize guitars, thunderstorm basslines, and the vocals are so strong, assured, and solid. With any other band working in the same genre, the sound would be pushing towards “overproduced”, but the White Lies take the production values and run with them. It’s huge, and it works.

When the guitars kick in with some full-on overdrive crunch, the heart races, and you can’t help but feel lifted up, feel like yelling, singing along, even though the words aren’t yet memorized.

Then the second song hits, lower and darker. The vocals start to journey towards that exploding teardrop, but the push of the chorus brings it up and out, into a different world. It’s making me think of a really good song by Kasabian, if it was covered by Muse, with Julian Cope taking over the vocals. The similarities to Mr. Cope hits a few times throughout this album, and I would love to hear this band cover something like “World Shut Your Mouth” (they’ve gotta be able to do it more justice than Death Cab), but it’s not in every song, it’s just part of the range which moves perfectly against the push of the music.

“A Place To Hide” starts out with a slightly Nick Cave touched shadow in the vocals, but then it lifts up and out, still floating on those darkwaves, but even though you have all these sounds coming out, sounds of gloom and doom, the thing that gets me is that the songs feel so uplifting. The song titles don’t lie, there are themes of death, losing your life, looking for a place to hide, taxidermy, the price of love, but these, in the end, are songs of going beyond that. What is death but a new beginning? These songs are arena sized, and with every twist towards darkness, there is still the promise of light.

I’m not saying that the songs are actually full of happy words or anything, just that the dynamics that this band pushes out, gives you hope, for what it’s worth. Like the unbearable crush and loss you felt swimming through the deepest throws of teen angst being slightly lifted by some sudden knowledge hitting that you aren’t the only one feeling it.

“…You've got blood on your hands
And I know it's mine
I just need more time
So get off your low and let's dance like we used to
But there's a light in the distance
Waiting for me, I will wait for you
So get off your low and let's kiss like we used to…”

 White Lies “Unfinished Business”