Friday, 21 February 2020

Review of ‘Love Is A Virus’ by Lola Demo



This mind-blowing album is pure seduction by music. ‘Love Is A Virus’ is very in-the-moment but its lyrics deliver an overall message about society’s obsession with making us into what we are not, with being other than oneself. When one tries to change what one is, the things that define an individual, we are no longer wholly ourselves - That which makes each individual unique.  Auden takes up the question in his poem ‘Alone’, and concludes ‘Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.’  We are made up of what we are and what we become, to deliberately try to change that is to disturb or distort the equilibrium that is our true essence - That which is sacred.  Our truth.

The drums pick up late in ‘Like Love Is Elastic’ but at precisely the right moment. The music video ending with the error message ‘System Failure’ blinking on the screen:
Where was the lifeline music? What had happened
To consolation, prayer, transcendence –
To the selective disconnecting
Of the pain center?

Ted Hughes, ‘Opus 131’.
The lyrics to some of the songs have a ballad-like structure and flow as in ‘Cry Too Much Don't Love Enough’:

            Is it real when I never touch your skin
            Is it true when we leave that it’s never been
                        Your face was alive but your heart was dead
            And I couldn’t connect to the internet

As in Lola Demo’s other albums there are secret caves and conduits of instrumentals that add ground and depth off-guard, synthesizing with the lyrics, taking them along with their brutally poetic metaphors of violence.

'Love Is A Virus' is available to buy or stream across various platforms via this link.




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