White Lies
Ritual

I admit it, I didn't love "To Lose My Life." To my ears, it has always seemed like "the singles + something else to fill the canonical forty minutes," which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the "something else" were of good quality, something that happened only to a certain extent. This is to say that the approach with which I listened to the latest "Ritual" was slightly prejudiced yet somewhat hopeful because the Londoners have demonstrated they can write great pieces in their previous effort.

The start of "Is Love" doesn’t say much to me, the usual baritone voice of McVeigh, more or less the usual synths, more or less the usual bass, the drums, well, those are a bit less interesting, basically one of those pieces that falls under the "something else to fill" mentioned above (even though live it seems like a piece that works much better than on the record). Then, just like with "To Lose My Life," comes the combo of pieces that gives you hope that from here on, things will get serious (yes, for the previous album I mean "Death" and "To Lose My Life," which are the first two tracks, but you know what I mean). "Strangers" and "Bigger Than Us" are truly two excellent tracks, especially the former, which has an amazing lyric ("Strangers don't hide. The morning hunts you down, and there's nothing stranger than to love someone.") and a synth hook that clings to the cerebral cortex and struggles to leave. Then, when you are all pumped up and convinced that they have finally brought out the talent you believe they have, comes... um... practically the rest of the CD! "Peace & Quiet" is trash, pure and simple. "Streetlights" slides by like water without provoking anything but a total nothingness. Then, just like "Farewell To The Fairground" stood in the second half of the first album as a monument to illusion (something you discover only at the end of the CD, damn those three jerks), "Holy Ghost" pops up here, which smells of New Order a mile away, but it is well-packaged, finally Lawrence-Brown does an excellent job on the drums, and it still gives you some small hope for a quality ending. Hope that will obviously be unfulfilled, in full - let's say so, as it is now confirmed - White Lies tradition, with the last tracks serving only as the soundtrack to a series of yawns, with the half-exception of "Bad Love," which is less bad than the others, but still nothing unforgettable or that could prevent me from giving an insufficient evaluation of the album.

Summing up, White Lies have fundamentally offered a worsened edition of the already slightly-more-than-sufficient previous CD: the best tracks do not stand up to the comparison with the most beautiful pieces of the previous one (with the very noteworthy exception of "Strangers," another monument to illusion and buried talent, but so deeply buried) and the "something else" hasn't improved in quality, nor does it shine for cohesion among the individual pieces. And, if such an album conception can give you some hope of future evolution at the first album (especially considering the young age of the trio), when the second album even shows signs of regression it means that, behind the mountains of smoke erected by the usual NME, Q, and so on, there's really very little substance.