Despite its impending theme of hopelessness, Suicide Songs delivers on every level – not least of which is highlighting Jamie Lee as one of the finest wordsmiths of his generation.
Suicide Songs sees the trio perfect what they started to build on their debut. The murky allure of the Northwest is still a prominent aesthetic, yet second time round they have the confidence to shed more light on what was previously kept quietly in the shadows.
This is not as bleak or as unrelenting a record as it might seem on the face of it, and it isn’t, either, quite the record we might have expected to follow The Shadow of Heaven. Rather than build on that record’s elegance and lightness of touch, MONEY have traded it out for something less polished, that’s often brutal in its emotional delivery.
Suicide Songs juggles anguish and optimism in equal measure, somehow mournful and triumphant in search for some kind of personal salvation.
The contemplative, climactic nature of Suicide Songs, filled with layers of swirling strings, glorious brass sections and celestial vocals, resonates with an affirming sense of having confronted death face to face.
If their 2013 debut, The Shadow of Heaven, diluted Lee’s dramatics with watery, almost tropical production, then Suicide Songs lays out more fertile ground for his melodrama.
Emotionally resonant and rapturous record of towering proportions, this second full-length release for the British trio is an ardent combination of emotions and crushing noise blending with vocalist Jamie Lee's heartrending vocals equally airy yet commanding that delivers poetry into songs. One of those few records that moved me to the core.
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