Album Review: White Lies - Ritual

White Lies - Ritual

After the success of their 2009 #1 debut album To Lose My Life... White Lies return with their brand new album Ritual. Variously compared to the Editors, Interpol and and Joy Division, Ritual is more doomy guitar rock - although the band believe their music is more uplifting than any of those three other artists.

I'll be honest, I find the White Lies hard to like. Ritual is clinical and crisp and perfectly competent, but there's not much about it that you can love. In places it's quite tuneful and anthemic but the downbeat vocals mean it lacks enough soul to really mean anything. Single Bigger Than Us is a decent enough radio friendly guitar tune but beyond that Ritual fails to deliver anything approaching a knockout punch.

Influenced by early 80s artists - you can hear the Talking Heads, Depeche Mode and early Tears for Fears on this record - it should be something that I like. Indeed, closing track Come Down's sparse backbeat sounds so much like Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight that it is instantly familiar. However, whilst it's an album I am happy to listen to, Ritual sounds like all the emotion and meaning has been eliminated in the production. Disappointingly, it's a perfectly competent record without actually being any good.