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Love Rarely share new single and video, Severed
Watch the video for Love Rarely’s new single Severed, which is taken from next month’s debut album Pain Travels.
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Album review: Love Rarely – Pain Travels
Mathy Leeds quintet Love Rarely’s superb debut album travels straight to the gut, the heart and the feels.
- Words:
- James Hickie
Pain Travels, according to the debut album from Love Rarely, though the route this Leeds quintet take in articulating its effects is anything but obvious. Some pain is our own, while some goes unresolved, passed down from one generation to the next like some combustible compound. How it manifests itself is unforeseeable.
As is Love Rarely’s music, a curious mix of early Biffy Clyro, math rock and emo melodies that proves so effective, you wonder why someone hasn’t happened upon this formula before. Pain Travels is the sonic manifestation of attack being the best form of defence, weaponising vulnerability, because hurt people hurt people’s ears.
Opening track Will suggests that at least some of the trauma that informs Pain Travels has been successfully processed (‘I’ve grown so much you wouldn’t know me’), though the sparseness of its words make it hard to discern conclusively (‘Stay low / Go slow / Turn to stone’).
Even when the subject matter is met head-on, as on Severed (‘So pull up the family tree, the roots are soaked in alcohol’) the compositions swirl around vocalist Courtney Levitt’s words unpredictably – building, exploding, then retreating again – conveying an environment in which one feels uneasy, waiting for the sudden onset of a confrontation with someone whose self-destruction can’t be quelled.
Some pain, meanwhile, is the result of changes the other person can’t help. Dormant, which begins with a sunniness soon punctuated by furious stabs, finds Courtney confronting the heartbreak, anger and injustice of someone you love being eroded, piece by piece, by dementia.
Of course, you don’t have to have experienced these things, or necessarily need to know that’s what these songs are about, to appreciate their brilliance. Mould and Whiplash can simply be enjoyed for their sheer, rollicking forward momentum and spasmodic effect on the human body. Dig deeper, though, and this is a debut that has much to teach us about catharsis, be it individual or collective. Now that’s love.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Marmozets, Biffy Clyro
Pain Travels is released on April 10 via Big Scary Monsters.
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