LoveLikeFire: 'William'
LoveLikeFire may not yet be a household name in this part of the world but they sure have the credentials to become so; a Las Vegas four piece who name The Killers amongst their friends having once shared a garage with their globally successful peers and that is evidenced in their superb single ‘William’, a dark and enchanting pop song with hints of Brandon Flowers in the vocal delivery coupled with a sound more in keeping with 80’s British underground indie. Indeed, lead singer and band linchpin Ann Yu has been favourably compared with the iconic Siouxsie Sioux and it’s easy to see why, although it may well be more accurate to suggest the band as a whole sound like the Banshees rather than Yu is similar to Sioux on an individual basis. Whatever the interpretation, it’s best to just ‘William’ on its merits.
The song begins slowly and clearly, Yu displaying a beautiful voice over synths perhaps borrowed from The Killers. Here then come the drums and already you can hear that these notes are the building blocks of something bigger – there’s a really accomplished sense of drama in this song, anticipation building of the highest order, but it’s not predictable to the extent that you know when to expect the crescendo. As the blocks stand on one another the drums shift beat, morphing into military snare-based rolls that add texture to an already intriguing pop number. In a sense the beats remind me of The National; eclectic, unpredictable but ultimately essential to the performance of the song. It’s a feature of ‘William’ that the drums stop and start it when required, really guiding this song through and allowing the tale to take dramatic shifts in it’s stride, accurately gauging when tempo and time should be redirected to keep the listener in focus and get the best out of the song.
Mesmeric stuff, really. It’s a compliment to the band that this sounds like the work of a polished band unveiling the new single from their fourth album, not a band at the beginning of a road that can surely only lead to success based on this superb single. I really find it hard to identify faults with this work. Critics harsher than I might well point out that this sound isn’t ground-breaking, but I’ve always felt the musical wheel is just that; its continuing revolution is such that occasionally we hear things that have been done before, but in many ways that makes it harder for bands to create something you still want to listen to and LoveLikeFire have done that, taking the very best pop attributes of their idols and honing them into a near perfect modern, dark and daunting indie-pop hybrid of a love story.
Magnificent.
10/10
Words: Benjamin Coley.
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