It’s been a long time since a band has captured the mood of their music with their promo photos as adequately as that of the Midwest synthpop duo Lies to her self-titled debut album.
Neat on the one hand and brightly colored on the other, the pictures show a stylish grandezza and are nevertheless out of the ordinary with colorful exuberance, serene and full of irritating aces up their sleeves – while the sound of the new playground of the Kinsella cousins Mike and Nate turns to equal parts melancholic and reserved as exuberant and optimistic; loose and controlled; nonchalantly playful, but meticulously handcrafted.
How narrow the line between intimacy and absurdity Lies lies, is probably most clearly based on two scenes: In the rhythmic, dark keyboard walls heroically pulled up with tropical percussion and underneath the guitars interlocking Broken it says at some point “I’m over you/ You’re over me/ Congratulations!/ We’re both free!’ – and suddenly the air trunk twangs. But it’s not slapstick, it’s more like it Dirty Projectors-Choirs in bitter-sweet dreamy. And in the calm flowing Knife the subtle theatricality swells until the pompous melodramatics kicks in at the end – and applause erupts without further ado. However, the fourth wall is by no means shaky, the stakes on the edge of self-torturing catharsis are too high, all of this is hardly amusing in its ruthlessness, every relationship is a surly struggle: “I’m Jesus Christ after too much to drink/ But it’s too late in the night to reach for a knife/ Those baptized in my river, they know/ my tides rise high and the wine, it flows/ Sarah, I’m scared of losing everything/ Sarah, I know my place/ On my knees“.
Two particularly underlined moments of surprise, which one could not necessarily count on, but which fit harmoniously into the overall work – and also the (optical) aesthetics of the band – and to a certain extent only consistently continue what one could expect from Lies.
After all, the Kinsella cousins had already released half of their debut album as singles in advance: the lively, rumbling, solemnly reminiscent of the curiously jubilant Guillemots and beaming with melancholy Blemishes; the longingly strumming, reveling up to the saxophone solo Echoes along its exemplary contrast of elegy and undeterred progressing rhythm along with anachronistic drum rolls; the more ethereal shimmering breath Crow; the groove of Resurrectionover one textured with synths American Football-Trademark’s flirting spirit of optimism, which seem strangely slowed down until the strings flicker and the panorama fills with an orchestra; the dark banging, massive and conventional into the 80’s gen Muse and The Cure driving wave pop by Camera Chimera; as well as Summer Somewherewhich offers a symbiosis of ambient guitars with cinematographic strings in the club.
That all these numbers – without exception catchy tunes, as you know – but also ones that have an amazing half-life! – ended up on the album, but also creates an ambivalent aftertaste: it’s just in its first half Lies more of a patchwork panorama of individual songs that only creates a conditionally interlocking flow, while the really overwhelmingly gripping, emotionally stirring momentum (as the Kinsellas are currently doing with American Football subscribed) the last bit is missing.
Perhaps it would have been good to release the material that has not yet been singled out over the past six months as a separate, less spectacular EP, as this not only maintains the established level, but also diversifies the spectrum of what is already very multifaceted Synthpop continues in a homogenizing way – by finding a line and thus acting in a more focused way.
No Shame clings to a heartbeat a la Sigur Rosawakens as ambient pop in the esoteric Twin Peaks a spherical, female-accompanied 80s daydream, orchestrally erupting, meanwhile the contemplative Rouge Vermouth as a Wolves-Anachronism sounds in the melancholy rain. And before Merely as a fragmentarily crafted mosaic of small ideas, samples and vague scraps of melody ends the dance as a sketchy epilogue, what counts is what comes from the intimate acoustic fragility Sympathetic Eyes down a countdown to follow the nature of the adventurous record to bathe in the fireworks in a way that is as comfortingly uplifting as it is sad: “You wear the crown and I’m reluctant royalty/ You’re the queen of a crowd/ and I pray that no one notices me/ Sympathetic eyes/ Only after the curtains rise/ Go have a good time„.
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