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Liars Club/Regime Music [Release date : 23.02.24]
Interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine just prior to the release of his 2021 album, Born Against (a relevant and revealing play on words), Danny Kiranos explained his love of the music of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits: “It really is only three instruments, two instruments sometimes, and it’s this incredible playing with space and silence and the lack of noise that makes it sounds so full.”
He could have used those words to describe Yours Until The War Is Over. But beware, the space occupied by this new album is a dark, brooding, dangerous place. It’s not for the faint hearted.
His fierce demeanour reflects his European heritage, and like all great songwriters, he tells a self contained story with every track.
Standout track ‘Hanging By The Roots’ is the poster boy for Kiranos’s minimalist instrumental approach. Even basic ballast has been thrown overboard, leaving us simply with two guitars, one acoustic, one electric.
His intimate vocal style – like he’s telling us dark secrets – sets the scene here, “are you bound to find hope, or are you just a victim of the rope?”.
‘It’s All Gone’s wind up acoustic guitars and music hall percussion sit in unadorned tribute to Kiranos’s censure of a life unlived: “The only life that’s ever really worthless is a life without a story to tell”. Try telling them that when you reach the Pearly Gates.
His narratively and thematically rich songs peak with ‘I’m Going To Heaven’, buoyed by Morricone choirs and shouty vocals, his claim that ‘I’m Going To Heaven, and I’m Not Coming Back’ is a lyric to remember.
There’s a strong sense of melancholy threading its way through many of the songs. Scenes and characters float through vividly drawn settings, making songs like the lyrically deft love story, ‘The Mechanic’ come to life like a movie that’s over in 4 minutes.
The most affecting songs came a little later in the running order. The warped Americana of ‘Once Upon A Time In Texaco’, the tale of a drunken gas station robbery gone wrong (Nicely humorous Leone reference in the title), and the intensely moving ‘The Garden Of Leaving‘ both synthesize rural musical traditions with unsentimental (and all the more moving) story telling.
More evidence of an artist at the top of his game. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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