Album Review : The Love Language - Libraries
- Written by Lucy Dearlove
A word that springs to mind as the opening bars of 'Pedals', the first track of Libraries thump away, to rise in endless orchestral string hooks, is 'epic,' or aspirations of such. 2009's eponymous debut album from The Love Language, where Stuart McLamb's did his very best one-man-band act on the writing, performance and production fronts, was drenched in desolation and desperation. 'The story of one man's redemption' showed McLamb atoning for his self-destructive ways, and attempting to recover from recent heartbreak and his whole life generally going tits up. The result, recorded in a hurry on an old four-track, was lovely, fuzzy and sad.
On Libraries, the second LP from this North Carolina outfit, The Love Language seem to actively seek out tragedy and enter into articulating it enthusiastically and a little histrionically, which has just the slightest whiff of contrivance. While the level of emotional torment of The Love Language is clearly unsustainable across two albums, you can't help wondering whether McLamb should have written about what he was actually feeling, rather than what he'd like to feel.
Things get more interesting with the second track 'Britanny's Back', a jauntily harmonised plucked guitar ditty reminiscent of Urban Bohemia-era Dandy Warhols without the self-indulgence, and my only enduring earworm from the album. Here, McLamb's thin vocals, reaching an almost reedy quality elsewhere on the album, are fleshed out by his bandmates', and the result is charming, lovelorn and optimistic in one fell swoop. The strings, ubiquitous throughout the rest of the album, are kept to a minimum, and a cute steel guitar hook holds the whole thing together. The tragedy of love and life, so eagerly sought after on the rest of the record, is shrugged aside here, in favour of a song of pleasing, if a little unadventurous, circularity. 'This Blood is Our Own', which follows it, seems in comparison a little contrived in its aspirations as a theatrical ballad and there's a strong sense of The Love Language losing their audience before they ever had them truly in the palm of their hand.
This post-Love Language McLumb appears to enjoy greater success in songwriting when he is accepting, even defiant, in the face of tragedy and the audience is briefly reeled back in with 'Heart To Tell'; country in a shuffly sort of way, it is the album's other stand-out track apart from 'Britanny's Back.' Everyone knows a glockenspiel part is far better medicine for a broken heart than string arrangements and this track provides another brief glimpse of hope that this record could have been something more.
It's not to be, as the final four tracks slide into more overly elastic vocals and lush instrumentation, and not much behind them. Overall, the album has a brittle transience and air of exaggerated misfortune; while pleasant enough, Libraries' ten tracks slip just as easily out of the conscious mind as they did into it. It's enjoyable for its duration but fails to make a lasting impression.