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.