Love Migrate are a serious affair. Their band shots are all black and white and frowns with wounded eyes; the film clips make you wanna curl up in a ball and think of ex-lovers and sometimes when you’re watching them play, you feel like you’re intruding a little. But this album… well. This album is a masterpiece. It’s ambitious, slow burning and just beautiful. The guitars move between fragile and menacing and the drums move from way up the back to right up front when the songs demand it. Eddie Alexander’s voice is honest and local – unmistakably Australian – but in a really endearing story-telling sort of way. Alexander’s voice is complemented by his exceptional knack for a familiar lyric.
Making This Hard begins with the brilliant line “Only last night/On a cruddy bike” and you cant help but smile and start tapping your foot when the bouncy percussion steps in. First single Little Kid went through a slight sonic change from its first inception to the version on the album. The first version was fantastic; the second version is just brilliant. The guitars are gritty, the drums are fierce and Eddie’s harmonies are heartbreaking. Oh – and the brass! The fucking brass was a stroke of genius. Plagued Are All My Thoughts is another cracker. Completely different to Little Kid it is emotive and you want to listen to this through a good pair of headphones. PAAMT is probably a better representation of the album has a whole little package, rather than the pulsing Little Kid. The creeping back up vocal from Sleep Decade’s Casey Hartnett take this song to a whole other place. I expected a bit more of a vocal partnership between these two, but there isn’t much, making this juicy dangle all the better.
Dirty River is a delight, but it is the album closer I Want You To Mend that separates this album from others in the pack. Spoken from the perspective of a child this song is as brilliant as it was completely unexpected. Alexander has tapped into what we all felt as a child at some point – that wide-eyed, helpless emotion. The album is heavy, but it’s great and honest and familiar.
BY JACK PARSONS
Best Track: Little Kid
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: BON IVER, SLEEP DECADE, LOWLAKES
In A Word: Sad
