On their fourth album Friends, the enigmatic trio from England known as White Lies wrote and recorded without the backing of a label. Instead of seeing this as a negative, they took it as a positive and recorded without deadlines, budget or the need for record company approval. The result of this experiment is a polished album filled with highlights, which was well worth the wait.
From album opener Take It Out On Me, White Lies hit their stride and never look back, their sad but also somehow happy trademark sound is in full flight from the outset. Summer Didn’t Change A Thing is a single custom-made to be belted out with about 800 others packed into the Corner Hotel with an amazingly soaring chorus flying over solid instrumentation that’s consistent across every track. Each song that sounds like a sad song turns out to be uplifting and vice versa, White Lies pulling off this magic trick again and again.
Lyrically this album can’t help but make you wonder just how many heartbreaks these three guys have experienced, with almost every song dwelling on the topic of the pain of lost love. Track titles such as Don’t Want To Feel It All and Is My Love Enough? all tackle the issue, with the aforementioned Summer Didn’t Change A Thing being the worst offender of all. Outside the song topics, the vocal builds are awe inspiring, with the only knock on the album being that perhaps the big vocal build up is a touch overused, but it’s a minor gripe as it’s only noticeable if you listen to the album front to back.
Overall this is a fantastic record, and if I was White Lies new label I wouldn’t give them a deadline at all for their next album, because if that means more albums like this, then that’s surely what’s best for business.
BY NATHAN QUATTRUCCI
