SGR

Neverending White Lights - Act II: The Blood and the Life Eternal

Starts off kinda like Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness with a piano ballad - is the main guy in this group a Pumpkins fan? I bet he is.

And then we get to the uh….rocking, I guess? What’s the word when you’re playing guitar but it’s really depressing and not heavy? Eh, whatever. And the singing, sometimes crooning, sometimes love stricken, sometimes bereft of feeling. Sometimes it passes you by, sometimes the song begins and ends in the blink of an eye. Other times, you, like the singer, would rather die. And….where was I….?

Well how about the lyrics?

Love can save a thousand lives
Joy in a world that sweetly cries
For every violent moment it has become
The cure will come, thy will be done
Well its only lonely soul I'm after
The heart is dark but the world is darker

Er…yeah. Not big on this. This kind of sounds like the poetry I wrote when I was a depressed middle school kid. Man, was my poetry deep…

You get some synth sparkles and strings every now and then, like “My Life Without Me”. Synth sparkles….sparkles…what sparkles…? Vampires!? Well they didn’t used to sparkle, but in more recent times they have, primarily in Twilight, the famous book series by Stephenie Meyer. Why do I bring that up? Well, I can’t get that book cover out of my head when I look at this album cover - very similar - I wonder if there was some visual inspiration here, perchance?





Let’s ignore that aside, I suppose.

And then there’s Miss World…Miss World? A Hole cover?! No way…..oh….uhhh yes. So yeah, it’s basically a Hole song without the punch or the attitude. Too quiet, too forgettable, too “background music”. It’s too bad, because the original is a pretty good song. And uh, not to be controversial or anything, but the song isn’t the same when it’s a dude singing “I am the girl…”, I mean, Morrissey this lead singer is not.



Man, this album goes on for a long time. When I heard the first track, and thought of Mellon Collie, I kinda expected to get a similarly colorful soundscape but that really isn’t the case here. It essentially drifts between two tightly knit poles - inoffensive soft rock, and inoffensive soft rock with synths sprinkled on top, all of which sound depressed and detached - songs that rarely ever go anywhere, rarely ever bring you somewhere interesting. There’s no payoff here. It may start off like Mellon Collie, but it plays out more like Adore.

“Always” is okay I suppose, sounding like a weird crossover between mid ‘90s Foo Fighters and mid ‘00s Interpol. At the least, when the percussion picks up pace and the singer starts to get a little more energetic, it sounds like they’re trying to bring you somewhere. There’s some feeling in this song. Again though, by the end, it feels like it’s missing a closing act.

Where is love
Babe I hope it's where we are

Come on now…this qualifies as a chorus? Really?! I’d happily get drunk and belt out the choruses to Whitesnake...but not this…not this.

“Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Heart” is the first song, at least that I’ve noticed thus far, that features a female vocalist. Her voice sounds nice against the sparse piano led instrumental. Much better than the “Where Is loooooove” guy at least. Her voice is contrasted by a different male vocalist - some vocal contrast and interplay, sweet! Does it go anywhere instrumentally? Sorta, but not really.

“Bleeds to an End”? Yeah, more slow singing, more turgid, quiet, slow rock that doesn’t go anywhere worthwhile. There’s lots of interspersed spacey emotional “oooooh wooooooooooooh ooooooooh wooooooh”s though….very deliberate, very flat. It’s the kinda noises you’d make if you were suddenly a reawakened zombie who’s been doused in copious amounts of NyQuil and then thrown on roller coaster filled with loop de loops with the safety bar tightly applied.

Take all my strength
For this heart you’re to blame
Don’t you wait until it all bleeds to an end
Bleeds to an end

Are we gonna slit our wrists here and get this over with or what? Oh wait, never mind, four more tracks left.

There’s a perfect body in a perfect place
When it falls to pieces its nothing I can save

I was a witness, to your secrets
But something happens, something happened

I know I know you can
I know I know you can keep me here in darkness
Keep me here in darkness now

Another reason for me to forget your words
Baby it’s not me who hurts but that was what you said

Tell your secrets
Can you tell your secrets?

I know I know you can
I know I know you can keep me here in darkness
God knows where my heart lives now

You walk a straight line
You get it right on your first try
You get hurt but you don’t cry




I’m refilling my glass with bourbon now. There, I told you my secret. Okay…next track.

“Distance” - same ol’ same ol’. Next track.

“Last of the Great Lovers” - begins with the piano again, then some synth strings. Soft singing. If you could agree, everything’s over for us now. I couldn’t take…I couldn’t take…everything’s over for us now….but there’s one more track. This one at least has some rising synth strings and eventually the song kinda explodes a bit, and by explode, I mean sorta like a teapot that starts whistling - it explodes relative to the standard calm this album has established. So we got another track that at least tries to take us somewhere. To that end, I won’t ruin the experience here by looking at the lyrics.

Okay last track - and…almost 8 MINUTES LONG?! Oh jeez. Oh brother. This better be worth it. If the rest of the album is any indication, it won’t be. “Warding Off the Spirits” eh? Spirits have gotten me this far, I won’t be warding them off now thank you very much. Once again, we begin with the soft piano, and here comes the muted vocals. Two minutes in, we start to hear some guitar, the track changes a bit. Some nice reverb. That bass comes in right on time. And then the rest of the track is supposed to be the crescendo I guess. But the vocalist is so flat it just comes off as disappointing. Damn. Well, that’s that.

Yeah, I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t into this. Listening to this album felt like gliding from a giant flower petal into the spiky underbrush, but you never quite get caught, you just keep falling and getting scratched up. Just when you think something is going to pay off, the song turns its ass around and moons you for your naïveté. You go to slap it, but then it proceeds to quickly turn around, pull up trouser, and tell you that we’re all in darkness and nothing can be saved anyway. It doesn’t matter how many times it shows you its ass, it’s all for naught. It has all the thrills of a typical metro ride in the stinkiest subway in the early morning when you haven’t had your coffee yet but your stomach is still trilling from your overconsumption of booze the previous night and you don’t know whether or not you’ll make it to the next stop before you involuntarily **** your pants. It’s got all the charm of discussing contemporary politics with your mother in law. It has the self-reflective abilities of your average Stokerian vampire. Its like combining Kenny G, Coldplay, and your average emo band that plays at your local bar, adopting the worst aspects of each.

Still…there’s a couple tracks here that almost manage to be interesting or memorable. But the fact that it goes on for over 70 minutes is practically a crime against humanity and its collective eardrums. I guess the mix is okay, the sound doesn’t seem terrible on a technical level. But perhaps, the fact that it goes on for this long and hardly does anything interesting is perhaps an indictment of humanity rather than a crime against it.

So I tell myself
I only wished us well
Life is all we know
But somehow not for sure




2.5/10

SGR

By mechanical vocals, do you mean autotuned vocals? I'm gonna take a wild guess here that you're not a fan of rap music?

Have you ever heard A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory? Humor me.

Trollheart

Okay, I'm behind with my review but once I perfect this cloning technique I'll be good. For now, on we go.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

I did mean autotune, I couldn't think of the term at the time.

Yeah, I guess I'm pretty old school. I can get into the early rap of the eighties and early nineties but I got turned off when it became more of a gangsta rap style, especially when it actually became commercialized. Somehow talking about popping off the homie because it's entertaining as opposed to making it more of a social commentary wasn't my cup of tea.

So, yeah, give me Public Enemy or Arrested Development or even Ice-T (who was great at social commentary). Snoop Dogg is another story though.

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Trollheart

Neverending White Lights - Act II: The Blood and the Life Eternal.

From the moment this started I loved it. The double male/female vocal on "Dove Coloured Sky" (what a great title!) reminds me of a much slower Deacon Blue but the mood is more Antimatter (who?), with a very haunting quality to the music. I can hear elements of Kate in there too, as well as maybe a slower, more sedate Sisters of Mercy, in mood if not in melody. But no, to me, this really reminds me of Antimatter, particularly Lights Out and Planetary Confinement. The vocal duet works really well and it's a great start to the album, very ethereal and emotional. The drumbeat reminds me a little of "In the Air Tonight", just in its measured pace, and there there are touches of U2 near the end. A fantastic opener, and if I remember it just gets better.

I hear kind of a Celtic tone to "The Living", a slightly more powerful piece with that kind of, I don't know, Imagine Dragons? sort of intensity, sort of puts me in mind of Evanescence too. Great guitar work and again it's very emotional and evocative. Okay I see there are like fifteen tracks on this, but the link given has only thirteen, so I'm missing two, but as I'm late with this and am programmed to be very busy, I'll stick with this version even though I did buy the album. Perhaps a surprise, but I really hear Pendragon in "The World is Darker", around the Passion era; another female vocal with a grinding guitar and an almost new-wave feel in ways. Yeah I know; I don't know what the **** I'm saying myself, just winging it.

Sort of a Peter Gabriel mood to "My Life Without Me", much softer vocal which again brings back Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue, with a really nice sort of plaintive chant in the chorus and a thick, lush synth backing, very atmospheric. The vocal gets more intense now, like he's voicing some sort of internal pain he can't face or has been avoiding. I would say I really like this, but the comment would be redundant, as I don't think there's anything on this I don't love. I ran out of superlatives halfway through, and Amazon say the next delivery isn't till Wednesday, so I'll have to make do with what I have. Doesn't do justice to this album though.

"Miss World" is apparently a (man)Hole cover, and I'm not in the least familiar with their work so I can't comment on what sort of a job NWL do with it, but it certainly doesn't stand out as suddenly being different from the rest of the tracks on this album. The hook in the song is great and I like the sort of relaxed, laconic pace of the melody. It's quite short though and we're into "Always", which is a cover of neither the Bon Jovi nor the Atlantic Starr song, but does have a really nice ringing guitar underpinning it, and I suppose if there were to be a complaint here it might be that there are no uptempo rockers, but then I don't think it's that kind of album, and I'm certainly not making that complaint. Just remarking upon the fact.

The guitar riff reminds me of Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars". It's not like it, but it just reminds me of it, and also this song puts me very much in mind of The Maccabees, which is no bad thing at all. I love that band. I guess, given what I said above, this kind of is the closest (so far) to a more uptempo song. I must admit, when I was listening to it I did think he was singing "I will wait", whereas it is the title, "Always". Again, not a complaint, just an observation. Next up is "Where We Are", with what I would call a very Depeche Mode idea about it, kind of darker, a bit sterile in one way, at least in the opening minute or so though it then gets going on sharp Edge-like guitar (yeah yeah, sharp edge, I know; didn't intend that), maybe a hint of Big Country about it too, possibly "Wonderland"? Not sure.

The album has definitely gotten a little "harder" over the last few tracks, but it reverts to the more haunting style on the back of emotional piano and sighing synth as a female voice takes us into the beautiful "Black is the Colour of My True Love's Heart" with a very clear sense, I believe, of Nick Cave in the mood and lyric. Again, haunting is the word that best describes this, as the melody seems to stalk you down dark corridors, always just behind you, a soft footfall in the hollow silence, soft but urgent breath almost at your ear. Lovely little guitar piece, almost acoustic, which turns into a towering instrumental, bringing in strings (probably synth) and a resurgence of the vocal, this time in duet. Stunning.

An almost Genesis opening then to "Bleeds to an End", with lush synth and a crying style of vocal. Could be some clarinet in there, or maybe not. Slow, kind of menacing, ominous idea to this, a real feeling of darkness and despair permeating the song. I find "Nothing I Can Save" a little out of place then, with its bouncy, new-wave rhythm and its almost breezy tone, kind of nods towards early Police perhaps, before they got all up themselves. Another great hook and some fine synthwork. Slower, lush powerful synth and ringing guitar on "Distance", a more stately, grand piece with a vocal that again recalls Bono at his wounded best, or maybe Chris Martin. Just very emotional.

A lovely lonely piano lead-in then to "Last of the Great Lovers" with a female vocal that just oozes constrained passion, the kind of voice I would think that can convey volumes in one or two whispered words or a sigh. A beautiful violin I think also coming in now, weeping into the melody, but it's the piano that drives it, almost comforting the singer, offering support even though it's a futile effort. It all goes very stripped-down then near the end, with single piano notes melding with single words until a guitar rises like a rescuing angel on wings of sympathy and pity. Another excellent song and it ends powerfully.

And they've saved the best for last, the one that had the most effect on me the first time I listened to this, the one that told me this album was something special. "Warding off the Spirits" opens again on soft piano, with a heartfelt vocal, this time male, a second voice joining on the second verse, really strengthening the vocal. But it's in the ending that this song really shines; a kind of vocalise or chant or hum that allows the music to just seriously burn through with the kind of emotion that seriously brings the tears, and here they come again, sorry music sometimes affects me this way. Absolutely amazing and heart-wrenching.

I'm not generally disposed towards awarding top scores twice in a row, but I really don't have a choice here. This is phenomenal. I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said it's the best I've heard since we started this club.

Rating: 10/10 (more if I could)

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Lisnaholic

^ Anyone caught trying to vote 11 out of 10 should be immediately suspended from the Club imo, although that would be difficult to implement in your case TH, as we are only here thanks to you.

Thanks Carpe! That's an interesting insight into your posting style, which is fairly brief, but makes clear that you have your own strong independent opinions.

Thanks, SRG, though I fear m_c might disagree as I have been pretty harsh about his nomination. In fact, Trollheart's glowing review of Neverending White Lights has tempted me to go back and re-listen to selected parts of it - did we somehow miss the "grinding" and "sharp Edge-like guitar" that he mentions?!

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

rubber soul

Probably not. Trollheart likes the Carpenters too

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Trollheart

Yeah, I'm usually on top of the world, but we've only just begun and rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

All I know is that I desparately need at least a sample of whatever Trolls has been smoking.

Lisnaholic

That's a great review you wrote, SGR. Many of your comments I would've liked to have made myself, and you have shown me that the lyrics were if anything worse than I imagined. I'm glad I pretty much ignored them all.

That's a clever comparison - and worth pointing out as an indication that most of the ideas throughout are secondhand and derivative. Nothing new, original or interesting to see here folks!

ME: "That one was punchier, but only relatively so."
SGR: "... eventually the song kinda explodes a bit, and by explode, I mean sorta like a teapot that starts whistling - it explodes relative to the standard calm this album has established."

No doubt here who wins the prize for good writing; well done, SGR !

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953