Open Mike Eagle

Salty old veterans of SYFFAL and our Track Marks mixes will recall enjoying Chromatics' slow burning cover of The Boss' I'm on Fire. The rest of you with poor memory or the even more reprehensible characteristic of never downloading my mixes might recall hearing the Chromatics Tick of the Clock as part of the stellar Drive Soundtrack.

What? You still haven't seen that movie yet? You're so fucking dead to me. The movie is so badass. It's actually two movies if you really think about it. The movie switches gears (pun shamefully intended) from heart crushing romance to head stomping bloody action in a way that was kind of similar in the way that Full Metal Jacket went from bootcamp mind meltdowns to the physical shit and sucky sucky of 'Nam. Two stand alone stories with different tones and themes.

Chromatics' Kill for Love, in the vein of these two movies, is a similar Bi-polar product....albeit with far less head kill shots and far more head nodding ear worms.

Picking up right where the band's Drive scrapped soundtrack left off the album has a big cinematic feel with lengthy instrumental spaces providing contrasting tone to the dark wavy pop songs that shine so bright. Um...as bright as dark wave can shine mind you. The Title track alone is enough to warrant a physical or digital purchase.

Whatever floats your boat.

Kill for Love takes me to weird awesome spaces that I never expected to go. Slow burners, unexpected Neil Young covers (Into the Black), and songs (These Streets Will Never Look the Same) felt like they were ripped from the dreamscape of a road ravaged future torn Bon Iver.

I'm digging this album so fucking hard.

I'm easily calling this one of my favorite albums of the year. ALBUMS really though. I need to figure a way to turn it into two separate records. Yes I am obsessive enough to re-label the tracks to send the instrumentals into their own secondary album.

Album 1: Kill for Spoken Love:

1) Into the Black
2) Kill for Love
3) Back From the Grave
4) The Page
5) Lady
6) These Streets Will Never Look the Same
8) Candy
10) Running From the Sun
12) Birds of Paradise
13) A Matter of Time
14) At Your Door
16) The River

Album 2: Kill for Unspoken Love

7) Broken Mirrors
9) The Eleventh Hour
11) Dust to Dust
15) There's a Light Out on the Horizon
17) No Escape

Fuck it who am i to screw with an artist's vision. Digest all 17 songs at once. Embrace the length and girth.