Tracks
Constantines: "Love In Fear"
(2005)
By Clayton Purdom | 9 January 2008
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Constantines. I love the Constantines like you love the Constantines, and I can say this with certainty, because everybody loves the Constantines, just like everybody loves Sigur Rós. Show me someone who doesn’t love Sigur Rós, and I’ll show you a goddamn liar. Same goes for Bossgazi.
That being said, aren’t we all a little scared about Tournament of Hearts? On a gut level, shouldn’t we all be prepping ourselves for a disaster? After a compact, venomous debut and a limber, brilliant follow-up, the Constantines are, from a logical standpoint, doomed. Stakes is high, knowaddimean?
So can I talk about “Love in Fear” right quick? Because it’s good. Not great, you know, but good, a tightly wound, heavily percussive burning of the midnight lamp. Copping lyrics from that Harvey/Yorke duet (“helicopters of desire,” “just kiss me on the rooftop,” etc.) this track stutters through the choruses with brief strobes of guitars at the end of each measure. The chorus grows out of this sound, not as propulsively as may be expected, but as a more driven extension of the verses, all of it coalescing to give the song a tumbling sort of circuitry, a ramshackle sense of gradual catharsis.
The song’s real highlight is, in typical Constantines fashion, the breakdown, replete with indecipherable group vocals (remember “OoVvEeRrDdOoSsEe!”?) and an air brimming with such quiet intensity, such taut dynamism, such speaker-rattling resolve, that the band itself sounds ready to spontaneously combust, let alone the drummer. They never do, of course, but “Love in Fear” doesn’t really wanna blow your mind like that. And, this being the first single off the new album, it’s apparent that the Constantines don’t really care to anymore, either. So, wait, do they suck yet or not?
That being said, aren’t we all a little scared about Tournament of Hearts? On a gut level, shouldn’t we all be prepping ourselves for a disaster? After a compact, venomous debut and a limber, brilliant follow-up, the Constantines are, from a logical standpoint, doomed. Stakes is high, knowaddimean?
So can I talk about “Love in Fear” right quick? Because it’s good. Not great, you know, but good, a tightly wound, heavily percussive burning of the midnight lamp. Copping lyrics from that Harvey/Yorke duet (“helicopters of desire,” “just kiss me on the rooftop,” etc.) this track stutters through the choruses with brief strobes of guitars at the end of each measure. The chorus grows out of this sound, not as propulsively as may be expected, but as a more driven extension of the verses, all of it coalescing to give the song a tumbling sort of circuitry, a ramshackle sense of gradual catharsis.
The song’s real highlight is, in typical Constantines fashion, the breakdown, replete with indecipherable group vocals (remember “OoVvEeRrDdOoSsEe!”?) and an air brimming with such quiet intensity, such taut dynamism, such speaker-rattling resolve, that the band itself sounds ready to spontaneously combust, let alone the drummer. They never do, of course, but “Love in Fear” doesn’t really wanna blow your mind like that. And, this being the first single off the new album, it’s apparent that the Constantines don’t really care to anymore, either. So, wait, do they suck yet or not?