Love Is Hell, Pt. 1

Like any album, comes with a back-story, one that is carefully calculated to construct the enfant terrible's self-myth. was intended to be the official follow-up to 2001's -- the album that was not a collection of demos (that was 2002's ), or the recorded-but-shelved albums 48 Hours or The Suicide Handbook, or even his alleged song-by-song cover of ' . Longtime fan that he is, teamed up with -- the man who produced , , and part of -- with the intention of creating his own mope- album, hence the title . label that it is, balked at releasing a stylized tribute to Mancunian rainy-day bedsit music and didn't release it, encouraging to record a different album, presumably one more in line with the label's taste. In the press and on the web, our hero spread stories about how the label claimed it was "too depressing" and "dark," thereby cultivating the myth that he's a maverick genius, while the label cheerfully countered with the defense that it just knew that our boy could do better. Eventually, a compromise was arranged: kicked out a new album, the self-descriptive , while releasing the equally self-descriptive as two EPs, the first hitting the streets the same day as the "official" album. While it might have been better had he gone the whole hog and released two concurrent albums, it's good to have out in some form, not just because ' cult was clamoring for it and not just because it's arguably a little bit better, but because two simultaneous albums are quite revealing of the methods behind ' work. In effect, both and are tribute albums, each a conscious aping of a style and sound, both designed to showcase how versatile and masterful is. But since he's a synthesist more than a stylist, , for all his bluster, winds up as a -styled character, taking on the characteristics of the artists he's emulating -- something that can be sonically pleasurable, but far from being the substantive work of mad genius that he relentlessly sells himself as. If (an EP that is longer than the concurrently released new ) has the edge over , it's because it's more carefully considered in its production and writing, and he manages to hide his allusions better than he does on , where every title and chord progression plays like an homage. Here, he shoots for and winds up in territory tempered with a dash of circa . To claim that is a dark affair is to criticize its milieu more than its substance, because the songs have the form and feel of brooding, atmospheric mope- , not the blood and guts of the music. is fairly adept at crafting that mood -- anybody that's such a fan of history should be -- sometimes relying more on a blend of attitude and atmosphere instead of songwriting. Such is the fate of a stylized tribute to a style with specific sonic attributes, but also does come up with a clutch of effective songs: the epic sprawl of which captures him at his best ; the title track, which is nearly anthemic with its ringing guitars; the understated ; the gently propulsive which would fit nicely between a track on a college radio show from the late '80s. But it's telling that the best song here is a cover of It's a well-done cover but not much of a reinvention -- uses 's solo acoustic version of the song as a template, replacing strumming with fingerpicked guitars and altering the phrasing slightly -- which is why the song itself shines through so strongly: it resonates how the other songs are intended to, but don't. While it doesn't fatally hurt , since it is an effective mood piece, it does undercut it, revealing how delivers the sizzle but not the steak. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine