Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth
Syd Lane from The Loaded Whispers says there are two kinds of music – “That which moves you, and that which doesn’t”. I challenge anyone to tell me that the music she and poet partner-in-crime Jeremiah James make doesn’t fall into the former category.
From the first song I ever heard (“Easily Loved / Easily Hated” on Daydream Generation 6) I knew that this was very special music, but nothing prepared me for just how mind-blowingly great a full-length Loaded Whispers record would be. It was a weekday and with an early morning working start I was planning on being asleep no later than midnight when I first downloaded “All Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth”. My intention was to listen to a couple of songs before I drifted off. In actual fact from the moment “I’ve Got Sunshine” magically burst into my ears utterly stunning me to the pillow in amazement, there was no way I was drifting anywhere until the last notes of final track “Up The Shore” had rung out.
The composite elements of this self-recorded Dublin duo are actually quite simple. Syd Lane has one of the most incredible voices you are likely to ever hear, gliding and soulful, carrying hers and Jer’s words over stripped back tremelo electric guitar or shimmering piano melodies. At the root of it all is simply great songs – heartfelt without being mawkish, and cool enough to carry even the most charged of emotional content to a different stratosphere in your mind. An instantly recognisable breeze of sound blows through the recording moving it in the same direction, so even though a whole handful of genres are toppled like dominoes (psychedelic folk, piano pop ballads, Pixie-esque guitar, country-tinged folk blues, and 60s acid rock & roll), it’s the consistency that kills you – that feeling that the flawless songs surely at some point much reach some kind of logical conclusion and snuff out. But no, even as the playful (and damn brilliant) Carpenter’s nod right at the very end makes you grin, The Loaded Whispers are still whispering away from you.
Stand out tracks? Oh where do I begin? “I Got Big Dreams” is beautiful and poignant and timeless, could have been written in any of the last five decades and been loved by any of its generations. “Tell Me How” is almost like hearing Nico hitting high notes – so good that it appears (quite rightly) twice on the record. “Eidolons” is a feisty boy/girl duet full of fire barely concealing the laughter below the surface. “Charlotte” is the kind of song that someone would have sold their own Grandmother for to put in Marianne Faithful’s mouth in 1965. “Suicide In The Trenches” is a lyrical heavyweight synchronised to perfection in Syd’s voice. And if I had to pick a favourite of all the songs it would probably be “Sick of Writing Sad Songs” – I don’t think a day has passed since I first heard this record when I haven’t gone back to it at least once, with it’s rolling majestic piano and understated explosive melodies. Some days I’ve listened to more times than I can count on my fingers and toes.
So there you go. If you haven’t heard The Loaded Whispers before then now’s your chance – I can vouch from experience that “Artists Use Lies…” is as great an introduction to a genuine talent as you are going to find this year. And if you already know about them, then I’m sure you will have been nodding your head in agreement through these clumsy paragraphs where I’ve attempted to convey just how great a record this is. Sometimes when you discover a band whose music you love you get an insatiable urge to go out and find every song they’ve ever recorded and gorge yourself over the following weeks and months and hopefully years of your life. In this instance though, I feel completely different – I want to savour this one, give it weeks at least to go back to it again and again, hear things I didn’t hear the first twenty times around, and re-hear the things I’d happily hear twenty times more. Listening to it now as I write this I still feel as stunned as I did when I first heard it on the wrong side of midnight. Long may the wind of song whisper.
You can download THE LOADED WHISPERS “All Artists Use Lies To tell The Truth” for FREE at our Quixodelic Record Store!