Love in Reverse is an impressive group: unique, acclaimed and sadly underrated. However, those with outstanding taste have often revisited the New Jersey-founded band's material over the decades. Those same fans now have reason to rejoice, for Love in Reverse has released a long anticipated album entitled I'm an Illusion, which is certain to please all its faithful followers, while luring a whole, new army of admirers.
As with Love in Reverse's past sojourns, Michael Ferentino's vocals are as smooth as silk. He's also reunited with the invigorating sounds of the super-talented Andres Karu and David Halpern. The results are nothing short of spiritual.
In fact, I'm an Illusion's content is so so heavenly, so sublime that it's impossible to pick a favorite track. Each gem seems to bounce to any given mood, though "Blood Donor" might be the real pulse behind it all, requesting the need to give unconditionally, whether for love or cause; though if this is the case, then the album's existential, title track is its veritable plasma, binding the variables to ensure that everything comes out just right. (BTW, the contagious groove of either entry would suit any 007 and/or "Mission: Impossible", opening-credit sequence. They truly do spurt that much soul-soaring spunk.)
"Glam of God" furthers the driving swagger, even if with a sprinkle of Haxan hypocrisy tucked beneath. Within its big, banging beat and empathetic lyrics, one might foresee something shiny, ethereal and colossal stomping by, but at day's end it's only plebeian inside, for in any simple, basic human heart resides that one real, fetching God: that truthful core beyond the glitz that helps one grow.
This charitable advocacy also prevails in reverse (tee-hee), per the swaying "No Way This Time", in which one is told to go one way, but damn well travels the other. "Adultery" matches its sardonic sting, perhaps not so much in tint, but certainly in its treacherous (though catchy) lament (a kind of Moody Blues-does-guilt, if one will), while "Something's Up" symbolizes a haunting, hiccuped suspicion as one drives through the eternal streets of envisioned betrayal.
Other tracks are just as penetrating, with "Bella Baby'"s ass-kicking rifts and shifts saluting a Pied Piper soul that's wise, gentle and strong. "Waydown/Burn it Down", on the other hand, is its New Wave, Marty Stuart antithesis, invoking a spiraling, Middle Eastern plunge into places that one has no choice but to accept or reject, depending on where one lands.
"Arrived", the marvelous, punctuating track, is an accomplished, futuristic, backward hello: a song that marks the end and start to all that one has (for better or worse) experienced. Its vibrations are pensive, draining, fulfilling and personify Love and Reverse's defiant endurance throughout the years.
With this said, Love in Reverse has never been part of the mainstream scene, even as it's existed within that lofty niche. In other words, there's always been a rebellious and uncommon quality to the group's impassioned intent. I'm an Illusion is no exception to that long-standing rule: a cathartic masterpiece and beyond any speck of debate, the best return sojourn in decades by any proven group.
Swing in at
https://loveinreverse.bandcamp.com/album/im-an-illusion
No comments:
Post a Comment