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God only knows what will have happened by then. They'll have almost certainly had the Bono-talk.
They may have had a child by Gwyneth Paltrow. Hell, if Chubby Broccoli (or Emaciated Carrot or
Just-Big-Boned Tomato) or any of the Bond producers get sight of them, then they're a shoe in for
the next 007 theme tune.
Because, do you know what MI6's finest actually wants? Fuck Chris Cornell, he wants lyrics
which either ask searching questions in plaintive tones or deliver grandiose statements as
indisputable facts. Or, preferably, alternate between the two. He wants songs which swell, and then
crash. Swell, and then crash. Start quiet, and then grow to planet-swallowing waves of sound.
White Lies have that in spades. Which certainly goes some way to explaining why their rise has been
metoric enough to cause most meteors to get all agoraphobic.
That, coupled to the fact that they don't lack material. At all. They've got songs which sound like
Duran Duran. Songs which sound like Joy Division, New Order, The Teardrop
Explodes and, most remarkably, one which is the living spit of Vienna by Ultravox.
All of which are pristine, and some of which already seem to have captured the imagination in a
manner belying a band only just playing their first (sold-out) London headline show.
New single Death does pulsatingly desperate romanticism in a manner that Editors, despite
watching Control literally 14 times a day, still haven't got near to capturing, while Unfinished
Business is as stately and as epic as the QE2. Just a bit, well, cooler.
Both are sung back by the crowd in near-word perfect fashion, and both cause some quite
inappropriate air punching and baronial arm motioning by people who look, to the naked eye at least,
like they should know better.
The other thing which masks White Lies relative inexperience is the fact they've already got that
whole clinical Interpol'esque, "Yeah, we're fucking ace, so what of it..." stage presence that
dressing all in black and hanging around in the presence of too much dry ice tends to lead too.
Which is fine, so long as the songs can back it up. Which as we've mentioned, they most certainly
seem too. But it could yet be a problem, it could yet make White Lies a band to admire, rather than
love.
Time will tell. Until then, tortuously doomed Gothic 80s revivalism has never sounded more appealing.
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