Love Kills, the latest EP from the enigmatically named Desert Man is everything that we need right now. It’s an analog album for a digital world. A shimmering summer sound for an ever-darkening era. Music with depth and delicacy to battle the shallow, throw-away entity that commercial music has become. Lyrics that inject some much-needed sarcasm and satire to overdone societal tropes. Music that is both big and clever. Who’s not up for a slice of that?
This six-song suite kicks off with the REM-esque “Zodiac,” not the later emotion-by-numbers era but the brilliantly quirky heyday of Murmur, Reckoning and Fables… a fantastic alt-indie-rocker groover, that blends old-school charm with of the moment accessibility. You reach the end of this opening salvo and know that you are in the safest of hands.
Recent single “Penelope” keeps the energy levels up, a song that blends the graceful and the groovesome, featuring a brilliantly infectious riff and a verse-chorus transition that is as effortlessly smooth as it gets. Songs like “Willow Waltz” and the title track demonstrate that our sonic desert dweller is as great at the understated and restrained as he is at the foot-on-the-monitor party starter.
Remember all those times that lazy journalists, not me, but admittedly, people like me, claimed guitar music was dead, that indie was over, that rock music had had its day, something that seemed to grace the music press (remember when we had that too) pages on an almost monthly basis? Love Kills proves that journalistic hype and rhetorical hot air to be as false as they ever were. If anything, EPs like this prove that such music is as robust and healthy as ever.
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