Album review: Love Is Noise – To live in a different way

As marketing moves go, having Love Is Noise release their debut album on Valentine’s Day – a time to celebrate the object of our ardor or acknowledge our own loneliness – is a strong one. To live in a different way is a bittersweet record that chronicles the ache of longing and bite of anger we all experience in our formative years. Not revelatory stuff, but its execution is so gorgeous it’s difficult not to become enveloped in its woozy squall, and so deft it’s hard not to be wrong-footed by its stylistic detours. There is so much to love here.

Both literally and figuratively, Love Is Noise are all over the map. They’re named after a song by dour indie rockers The Verve, have captured the attention of FEVER 333 firebrand Jason Aalon Butler, and make music about the trials and tribulations of a lad from Bolton. Given that description, they possess all the musical components you’d expect, and then some, but assemble them in ways you wouldn't.

Single take.one.minute., for instance, is the answer to the question of what it would sound like having members of Linkin Park guest with My Bloody Valentine, but is way more refined than that description suggests. Evelyn is shoegazing prog as festival headline slot – ebbing and flowing around the ears as if band mastermind Cameron Humphrey were rendering his efforts live in front of you.

It hurts to know you’re there, meanwhile, illustrates that the contrast simplicity brings can be as striking as something elaborate, as Cameron dispenses a straight-shooting, Noel Gallagher-esque solo four-plus minutes into an otherwise more complex affair. It works because it’s done with so much affection for those constituent elements.

That these songs work individually and collectively is worthy of praise, but isn’t the best thing about this debut. That acclaim is reserved for the fact that for all Cameron’s talk about having created “something special” and “something our idols would’ve set out to create”, this is exactly what he’s done. Hyperbole is a stock in trade for musicians, but To live in a different way is worthy of it. It’ll break your heart in places, and your face in others.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Loathe, Static Dress, Deftones

To live in a different way is released on February 14 via Century Media