CHVRCHES — Love Is Dead ANALYSIS & REVIEW
Published 06/01/2018
This is the kind of album that I have been afraid to come across since starting to do these reviews. Of the many reasons I started this blog, one was that I was sick and tired of the lame, shallow, mass-adored pop music infiltrating our world, and I wanted to share my reasons of why it sucks. I’ve had some time to discuss that in these last couple of years, and I can only hope that you understand where I’m coming from, since I am now about to do the opposite. I have now listened to an album that shares very similar surface level perceptions to lots of modern pop disasters and uses the same small, exposed, specific techniques that have been watered down to meaningless filth by talentless musicians, but it has the wonderfully crafted musical substance to be considered a real success.
This is a damn good album, and I can’t ignore that. These small techniques that I alluded to — the abundance of vocal repetition, the synthetic reliance, the formulaic texture builds — are small for a reason; they are examples of aspects that don’t have, or at least shouldn’t have, specific quality level attached to them. They are created from the musical substance, and can be beneficial or detrimental depending on what the music is. These are aspects found abundantly in the music of Katy Perry or Justin Bieber or LMFAO, but with very awful and uninspiring combinations of musical elements. With this album, CHVRCHES directly shows just how far off lots of modern pop is in their goals by creating a similar one-dimensional, blatantly simple work that attains the level of pure delight many try to reach for. Despite the very modern day approaches, this music is much more similar to the likes of ABBA or Cyndi Lauper rather than Katy Perry or Owl City, in turn making this quite a rewarding listen given its surface, modern technical atmosphere.
How did they do it? It obviously wasn’t anything related to those aforementioned modern tropes. First and foremost, it was in melodic shape. I can’t stress that enough. It was in the core, broad musical principles where emotion and purpose thrived, and none better to have the most weight in that regard than the most controlling, overbearing musical element. These melodies were gorgeous in their rises and falls, important arrival points, and individual rhythm. A beautiful aspect about these melodies was in their energy relative to the form; many of the verses were rightfully less broad and stayed at relatively unassuming dynamic levels, all to have room to grow into these brilliant unique chorus motives where range and surprising connectivity brought real life to the music. They were also supported by fun, substantial countermelodies in the synths that did well to maintain interest while ultimately setting the stage for clear, knockout melodic lines in the vocals.
For example, the song “Forever” — probably my favorite song on the album — starts off with a nice sequential arpeggiated figure with disguising harmonic movement yet emphasizing tonic, then gives way to the slower, more prominent voice outlining the obvious harmonic movement while creating a beautiful drop from “mi” to “sol” at the end of the phrase. It then bridges to the chorus with a rise in vocal register, signaling change, and a welcome syncopated rhythmic pattern that maintains interest and direction, finally reaching the crux of the build by settling down on tonic with a fast 16th note repetition on word “forever” that uses a surprising leap of a 5th among the neighbor tone motion which clinches the memorability factor of this song.
Nothing that I described here was overly complex or difficult to find, but it was these simple ideas about how melody was born, shaped, and developed, that made this album a truly fun, worthwhile listen. Those singular crucial ideas are where many pop stars fail today, but this group had the mental thought and ounce of creative drive to follow through with their ears. That’s where the gap in modern pop is made. Other big melodic highlights were “Graves” and “Heaven/Hell”.
Every song had great melodic execution in their own way, consistently finding moments worth building to and surprising yet wonderfully connected diatonic leaps in each direction where the emotional weight completely lived in. Its one slight downfall overall was in the constant, naive repetitive nature of melodic material meant to be simple fluff or have transitional roles, which lost some excitement and was an example of a generational pop mainstay not doing any favors. The overall synthetic dominant sound was what really drove this single dimension feel of melodic fun, for better or worse.
The timbre was close to breaking through and becoming something truly intertwined with the musical direction in a very pleasant way; however, I couldn’t quite get over the incessant brightness of the tone quality, with the decisions on which melodic synth to use ending up being a bit distracting. The sound provided lots of exciting layering in quick texture changes, and although predictable, they completely enhanced the melodic development and helped create one cohesive atmosphere that was rather enjoyable to be in. The heavy vocal production truly paid off as well in creating space with strong reverb and echo effects. The sound did fall off the tracks and became too much of an over-dramatic presence in the song “Miracle”, making the slow beat and uninteresting vocalizations too cheesy, but surprisingly that was the only song that really lost balance with melodic direction despite a rather poignant, overbearing synth texture throughout.
For greatness to be reached, the harmonies needed to be a bit more connected to the awesome linear motion throughout, as they sometimes became a bit stuck in a three or four chord pattern that only sounded congenial as an accident. Purpose is a key buzzword to this album, though, and the harmonies were quite purposeful in sticking with I, IV, V, and vi, as they gave an easy platform to mold very expansive yet connected melodies while giving off a welcoming, accessible air. Thankfully, train wrecks were avoided by not employing any rhythmically dull, all too obvious four-chord patterns that dictated a song.
