CHVRCHES - Love Is Dead

Photo of ferns in Quinault Rain ForestIn "Graffiti," from CHVRCHES' new album "Love Is Dead," is Lauren Mayberry writing about the loss of romantic love, putting a what-if counterfactual to music, or is she writing about the imminent death of the world? She sings, "I've been waiting for my whole life to grow old/and now we never will/never will." There's a lot of talk about writing names on bathroom stalls and standing in streetlights and making a mess, about "being kids then," so there's a sense of looking back on an intense love that dissipated somewhere along the line (for undisclosed reasons), and there also seems to be a powerful regret about the loss of this love, which possibly represents an irremediable wrong that will affect Mayberry forever and preclude her enjoyment of her old age (because she'll always be thinking about what might have been with this former love). This is nostalgia turned into poisonous rumination, set to CHVRCHES usual array of erupting, overflowing synths. But there's also that "we" in "and now we never will," which suggests that this is a collective fate: none of us will grow old; our mistakes will come back to haunt us and there will be no relief. "Graffiti" is at once very pretty and very grim, and most of "Love Is Dead" has that same beautiful and punishing vibe.[BUY Love Is Dead]

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