| There's one thing that I should remember,"
sings Andy Cairns on 30 Seconds, the final
song on Therapy?'s third full-length album,
Infernal Love. Oh yes, what's that? "There
is a light at the end of the tunnel,"
he yells. Well, now he tells us. After 37
minutes of unadulterated angst, pain and
despair, Therapy? stick a vaguely optimistic
little Post-It note on the door of the medicine
cabinet. The previous album, Troublegum (1993),
was a similarly unhappy affair, but then
the neuroses were tempered by catchy, upbeat
tunes and the Belfast band's famed sense
of irony. No one will describe Infernal Love
as bubblegrunge. It's as heavy and dark as
Metallica, as morose and melodramatic as
Pink Floyd's The Wall; and it's great. Though
still a trio, Therapy? seem to have extended
their sound in all directions. Fyfe Ewing's
drumming, maniacal but machine-like on previous
records, now pounds and crescendos all over
the place, and Cairns's guitar is dominant
and varied in a way it never was before.
His voice, still essentially a hoarse little
thing, is multi-tracked and distorted into
the larynx of Satan on Me Vs You and Bowels
Of Love, the tension heightened by a string
section. The latter, in fact, sounds like
Tindersticks, up to the point when you realise
Cairns is singing "You poured .
. . maggots down my throat/Until I choked".
The narrowness which was always the group's
downfall has been jettisoned at last. This
album ranges from the pop accessibility of
Loose (which could have been lifted from
Sugar's Copper Blue) through heaving epics
like A Moment Of Clarity to an actual Bob
Mould cover, Diane, which is a work of pure
dark genius. Their transformation is complete. |
