Link to our Facebook
Link to our Instagram
Link to our TikTok

REVIEW: Chromatics 'Kill For Love'

6 April 2012 | 5:00 pm | Staff Writer

Chromatics' new album, following up on 2007's Night Drive is full of synthgasms and knock-out indie tracks. You'll yearn for more.

In a time when the volume of music a mere click or two away from our eardrums has reached overwhelming proportions, along come CHROMATICS with Kill For Love to give us the perfect excuse to step away from Rdio for a stretch and let a single band take charge.  

 

Clocking in at a whopping 90 minutes, this is an ocean of music that's best experienced if you simply lay back and let the tide take you away.  It's an album in the truest sense of the concept; a collection of songs that were made to be heard as part of a larger organism.  Sure there are tunes here like the synth-gasmic title track that could stand alone and command your attention but their true beauty is only revealed when heard in context.

 

As a band with a penchant for covers (they've previously done Springsteen and Kate Bush), CHROMATICS kick off proceedings with 'Into The Black' a re-make of Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)'.  This slow-burning opening sets the tone for the sprawling journey ahead with the closing electro bleeps ushering in 'Kill For Love' like a countdown clock.

 

Singling out highlights from the album is fairly straight forward but shouldn't be seen as degradation of the supporting cast of tracks which all expertly play their part in spit-shining it's stars.  My personal pinnacle though is 'These Streets Will Never Look The Same'.  An intense guitar line sets it off before an elegant piano and broken vocals emerge to ease the foreboding.  As it meanders, like a late night taxi ride home through neon-lit city streets, various elements come and go: a turbo boost of a beat, Studio 54 vintage effects, morse coded computer chirps.  It's the shortest eight and half minutes you'll spend this year.

 

This album sends me back to those times as a kid when after buying a CD and coming home, I'd go straight to my bedroom, press play and lay back to do nothing but immerse myself in every detail of what I was hearing.  Listening to music was "doing something".  It wasn't background noise as I did homework, or played Mario Kart or read a book.  My sole focus was on the music, trying to wring out every last drop of blood, sweat and tears that had gone into creating it.  Kill For Love earns the right to be heard like this, so drop everything and spend some quality time with it.

 

Plug into the latest music with our FREE weekly newsletter

Words by Brad Davies.