He’s fulfilled every promise made by Badlands and then some, and despite whatever depths of pain made such an eruption of shattered awesome possible, he’s managed not just one of the best albums of the year, but one of the most genuinely moving, as well.
Drifters/Love Is the Devil is more robust and eccentric than anything he's ever released before.
The albums are two vistas from two emotional locales - Drifters being external, Love is The Devil being internal - that reflect the two facets of authentic lonerism: the perception of the stalwart nomad and the emotional derangement of permanent displacement.
As it turns out, to be confused on how to take this record is to be listening to it properly: it’s an album about confusion itself.
While it’s certainly debatable whether or not Drifters / Love Is the Devil would work best in a more condensed, single-serving format, the two aesthetically unique yet thematically linked halves present a sort of detailed descent into madness that would be hard to pull off without the extra disc space.
Even without lyrics or a voice for over half the album, Dirty Beaches still affects emotions in a primitive, endearing way.
The gloomy and beautiful tracks on Love is the Devil may be pointing a way forward for Dirty Beaches, they may have been conceived as a spiritual complement to Drifters, or they may just be a temporary detour; whatever their intent though, their presence is a welcome addition to the Dirty Beaches catalog.
More than a double album, Drifters/Love is the Devil is a pair of poignant records. Hungtai’s ideas swing rapidly from beautiful to chaotic to completely atonal.
Individually these would be two good albums. But as a complimentary pair they become much more. Atmospheric and emotional, experimental and personal.
Drifters/Love Is the Devil spans nearly every sound in Dirty Beaches' musical spectrum to make another strongly evocative album in Hungtai's body of work.
As tough sledding as Drifters/Love Is the Devil can be both psychically and musically, there are enough moments of enlightenment that make you more than willing to follow Hungtai wherever he goes
Isolated, disparaging and ultimately self-referential, Hungtai has delivered an album that might not sit well with those in thrall to the more upbeat constructions of his previous works
There are magic moments, but the overall effect might make you drift off rather than have you on the edge of your seat.
Drifters/Love is the Devil eschews Dirty Beaches' wonderful penchant for crafting fictional musical worlds. Instead, it lurches within a reality-focused album that is stuck in a noxious tar pit of remorse, nostalgia, depravity, and relational apocalypse.
(Original Score: 60-70)
Y'know when you first hear a record and you don't quite get it, but it intrigues you enough to want to give it another listen?
Well that is what happened with this record.
And when it clicked,
it clicked HARD.
First listens are pretty rough with me, I struggle to pay attention to a lot of albums that I listen to since my adhd can be pretty haywire sometimes. When I heard this record at first, I was fascinated by its aesthetic, but I couldn't get myself to pay attention ... read more
Loving the subtly groovy and depressive tone this album has going on, and the way it maintains it for its entire runtime has to be applauded. It's an oddball album, but a really delightful one.
Love Is The Devil. As good as ambient lo-fi recording, composition, and sequencing can get. Recorded in Anton Newcombe's Berlin studio, an unsung hero of this record.
Love Is The Devil. As good as ambient lo-fi recording, composition, and sequencing can get. Recorded in Anton Newcombe's Berlin studio, an unsung hero of this record.
second half (love is the devil) is one of the most beautiful things i've ever listened to...
1 | Night Walk 3:55 | |
2 | I Dream in Neon 3:35 | 90 |
3 | Belgrade 3:39 | |
4 | Casino Lisboa 3:46 | |
5 | ELLI 3:15 | |
6 | Au revoir mon visage 4:01 | |
7 | Mirage Hall 9:47 | |
8 | Landscapes in the Mist 5:13 | 92 |
1 | Greyhound at Night 3:24 | |
2 | This Is Not My City 3:42 | |
3 | Woman 3:53 | |
4 | Love Is the Devil 4:11 | |
5 | Alone at the Danube River 7:33 | |
6 | I Don't Know How to Find My Way Back to You 3:28 | |
7 | Like the Ocean We Part 4:32 | |
8 | Berlin 7:37 |
#24 | / | Tiny Mix Tapes |
#40 | / | Time Out London |
#57 | / | Rough Trade |
#65 | / | Crack Magazine |