Deck-Brained

New music for the one-track-minded…

Having contributed a moody little number to the Drive soundtrack, the Chromatics are back with an epic 17-song double album that’s just as dark, solitary, and saturnine as Night Drive, their last album from five years ago. The title track, Kill for Love, has the clandestine comfort of a black light or a leather tuxedo, an impossible combination of opposing forces, neither of which could exist without the other. When vocalist Ruth Radalet, in all her smoldering aloofness, slow-burns the lyric “Everybody’s got a secret to hide / Everyone’s slipping backwards,” you can hear the crisscrossing fishnet of influences—their hometown of Portland, old Joy Division—and you welcome the twin falls of euphoria and angst that wash over you.

Leave a comment