White Lies: Ritual

A lot of the time, I listen through an album the first few times, and wonder "Why this?" Why is this artist expressing themselves in this way? In the case of White Lies, it entails drudging up a classic postpunk sound from the early 80's, flush with giant synths, faux-symphonies, and a stilted crooning vocal style. The sound wants to be big, to the point of near-parody. Every lyric on this album wants to be the most important feeling in the world, and a lot of it comes off as heavy-handed, if sophisticated, high school poetry. The music backs it up by sounding blown up.

I resisted. It didn't feel like it meant anything, even as it attempted to mean everything. I could see it working toward being dire, dejected, severe, serious, romantic, melancholy, morose, melodramatic, and a shitload of other adjectives. If White Lies have anything honest to say, I wasn't willing to hear. It was all too dressed up.

But the more you listen to an album, you're either going to like it more or get sick of it, and I didn't get sick of Ritual. I still think it's a bit silly (like how the CN Tower is a bit pointy,) but I at least find its melodrama charming. It's partly in the way they build their sounds, usually starting with a small lead in and culminating in a huge clattering of synths or orchestral strings or even guitars. A good example of this is "Is Love," which absorbs me every time I hear it, even though I don't like its ploy of a modest opening section. Once it embraces that it wants to be a huge dance song, it works better. Most of these discrete tunes work the same way, resetting the meter to the bottom and building back to the upper limit. Only album-closer "Come Down" whirls onward at the same tone. Sometimes, then, the album comes off as repetitive, but the good ones are all equally good, and the bad ones are at worst still inoffensive, and it would take a listener's subjective opinion to determine which was which.

Because after all, in that melodrama and exaggerated sense of self-importance -- if it's intentional or not, if it's meant to be serious or not -- is escapism. It blows up all the problems of its singer's narrative to be huger than conceivable, every feeling becoming a matter of life and death even though the listener knows love is not usually so cut and dried. Lots of "nevers" and "alwayses" and "everys" and "nothings" take me out of the lyrics' reality, but it somehow works as image, as flash and sensory input rather than food for thought. I feel like there's a lot of nonsense in here, but it's somehow entertaining nonsense. The grandiosity becomes an attraction. I can't take it seriously, but I can take it.

This is a backhanded compliment. I freely admit that. It's probably not what the guys in White Lies were going for when they began penning "There's nothing stranger / Than to love somebody." I couldn't recommend the album on those merits, and quite frankly I'm still not, but I am interested in exploring its strange appeal to me, because I found myself gladly spinning it again and again to observe these sentiments, completely unironically, and yet knowing that I don't think it's very good, or at least good in the way it wants to be (the gray-clad creepy twins on the cover seem like a giveaway.)

This is not my finest moment as a critic, but luckily, I'm just some arse with a keyboard. I almost didn't write this review, but like going back to the beginning of "Is Love," I did, because I had to get through it, and like this album, I'm unsatisfied with the result, but at least I tried to say what I meant.

But whatever, man. It could very well be a postpunk triumph, and its deadpan nature is its strength. I'm as open to that as I am the negative interpretation. I wouldn't be afraid to like this music, although I wouldn't brag about it either. Sometimes things don't work out the way you plan, sometimes music you don't think you should like ends up having value to you. I'm not dogmatic, and I'm not desperate to fling some meaning on this. What I've learned to be the place of the reviewer is to guide the reader. I can tell you how you might enjoy something, but I can't overrule you. This album is a bit like an MST3k movie. "Did he just say Bad sex and ethanol?" Yeah, and he meant it. Isn't that weird?

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