White Lies – As I Try Not To Fall Apart review

Seeing most of their contemporaries – Delphic, Editors, Late of The Pier, Friendly Fires – fall more or less by the wayside certainly hasn’t delivered any kind of negative message to White Lies: indeed, the story of their decade and a half plus career pivots more to endurance.

In the beginning their doomy synth-pop, pre-occupied with death and notions of romantic sacrifice felt like merely an extension of the 80’s pillaging scene around it. But the trio of Harry McVeigh (vocals / guitar), Charles Cave (bass) and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums) have since carved out a niche that’s given it a remarkable long tail in the face of the relentless cultural shift towards nano-disposability.

As I Try Not To Fall Apart is the trio’s sixth album and in the grand but rapidly declining tradition of giving your likely audience what you know they want, never turns the melodrama setting below 11. If that’s what you come for, take a seat and let the title track, Blue Drift and Am I Really Going To Die punch your ticket in style, whilst the Elon Musk baiting I Don’t Want To Go To Mars adds an unexpected twist of satire to the otherwise customary formula.

You can read a full review here.