Time To Kill Was Always An Illusion

Chvrches “Graffiti”

Chvrches sound so nervous and frightened on their third album Love Is Dead. About half the songs sound as though they’re trying to appease several constituencies at once – label people, radio programmers, random Spotify listeners, their old indie fans, themselves – and land in a weird space somewhere between the songs that made them popular and the corny, vacant melodrama of radio acts like Imagine Dragons and OneRepublic. Too many of the songs feel overworked and compromised. The songs that work best, like the opening track “Graffiti,” deliver the sort of melodies and synth tones they gave us on their debut album, but cautiously add no new elements.

This anxiety comes through in the lyrics too. Lauren Mayberry’s voice always sounds bright and confident, but her words fixate on guilt, confusion, and an all-consuming feeling that everything and everyone is doomed. “Graffiti” is about reckoning with the notion that the future has been canceled, and thinking about what that means personally. Suddenly a lot of time feels wasted, and what she expected of her life feels impossible. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to grow old,” she sings. “And now we never will.” There’s a lot of songs about wanting to burn bright in your youth and never get old, but it’s rare to hear a pop song that is disappointed by the idea of only ever being young.

Buy it from Amazon.