WEEKEND VIDEO
“To Lose My Life” |
White Lies are three articulate chaps from West London whose music has a stadium-scaling ambition that belies their tender years. The Gothic, grandiose synth-rock of their debut album channels the shadowy sheen of 1980s pop (notably Tears for Fears and Echo and the Bunnymen), while Harry McVeigh bellows lyrics full of fear, death, blood, teardrops, dreams and flying. It’s an undeniably powerful formula — as in the opening salvo of “Death” and “To Lose My Life,“ all killer choruses and souped-up orchestration — but the darkness is too neatly packaged to offer genuinely miserabilist thrills.