white lies - to lose my life...

So, White Lies, one of the first big hype bands of 2009, voted #1 in the BBC's Sound of 2009 poll and tipped everywhere else that requires an opinion. Like Duffy last year, there must be too much money riding on them for failure to be an option - at the time of writing the album is on course to debut at #1 in the album chart this coming Sunday. Of course, there's nothing to say that most of those CDs won't be in the second-hand racks in a few months if it's no good.

It seems so far that White Lies are more so defined by who they sound like than what they sound like. That sound being the gloomy, atmosperic mid 80s indie rock. Think Julian Cope fronting Echo & the Bunnymen. Grey raincoats and messy dyed black hair. The Cure. And, likely through accident more than design, The Sound (former label-mates of the Bunnymen and one of the most unjustly neglected bands of that time - I'm sure Bono and the Edge were taking notes though). "E.S.T." nods heavily in the direction of stadium-era Depeche Mode, while "From The Stars" cribs from Joy Division's "Atmosphere".

Listening to 'To Lose My Life', it's clear that it's made by a young band in thrall to a particular sound. That's not to say it's bad, far from it. The opening tracks, and former singles, "Death" and "To Lose My Life" both actually sound much better on the album than they did on the radio. The whole album hangs together well as an entity, so individual songs benefit from being placed in some sort of context.

There's not much in the way of obvious, mainstream, anthemic crowd-pleasers - though there's hardly anything all that challenging either. Most of the songs are mid-paced, slow burners, which is really my one major criticism of the album - there isn't much variation in tempo throughout. Eventually, it all starts to blend into one somewhere after the midway mark. The adolescent angst and forced gloom of the lyrics gets a bit grating after a while too.

There's definitely a lot of potential here, and hopefully 'To Lose My Life' will do well enough to allow White Lies a second album, and more importantly an opportunity to forge a path of their own out from under the looming shadow of their influences. Still, it worked well as a starting point for U2...

[Stream] White Lies - To Lose My Life... (full album)
[Video] White Lies - "Death"