Lovelorn are an electronic dance and rock group based out of Austin. The duo, at their core, used to be the locus of the Philly psyche and garage band Creepoid—the husband-and-wife duo of Anna and Patrick Troxell.
Lovelorn’s character is a severe departure from the shoegazing rattle and roar of the couple’s previous project. It is the difference between a single, swinging light fixture in an unfinished basement, to a barrage of neon lights flooding your senses from a stage set ten feet off the ground. Lovelorn are the Troxell’s gambit for, not just success, but complete sensory overload.
Aesthetically, Lovelorn’s debut LP What’s Yr Damage appears to be a synthesis of the ’80s-infused bombast and clash exhibited by CRIM3S and Cyrtsal Castles, with the more mature and confidently melodic combinations of rock and acid house that coalesced throughout the ’90s through the work of bands like Garbage and Republica.
The pliant and lightly intoxicating texturing of the opening track “Fight or Flight” definitely captures the sense of tragic momentum that bands like Health used to shed in sheets and which informed the serotonin-sapped dream-pop of early Grimes efforts, while tracks like “Get A Job” more directly mirrors the quietly seething shiver of Crystal Castles at their most somber.
However, the goal for What’s Yr Damage, and the way it was clearly conceived, diverges significantly from the brooding dance-rock of the mid-’00s and early-’10s. Lovelorn are not simply attempting to provide a playlist that reciprocates and reflects back at you your social isolation and crushing alienation while you slowly rot away in a studio apartment. Instead, Loverlorn want you to move, and beyond that, they want you to have a good time while doing it.
These seemingly lofty ambitions manifest in the adrenaline-spiked, bucking rhythms of tracks like “Sickness Reward,” whose spiny electronic grooves roll in like a thunderstorm, atop which Anna rides like a tempest chariot master, half Shirley Manson, and half valkyrie. “Hole In Yr Soul” grooves on a navy-blue colored lap of soulful, post-punky anguish and desire, followed by the enigmatic rush of “Around You,” whose bassy sequences bind together an unruly cloud of exploding, technicolored synths, and stacking collisions of timber-fiber beats, while much later “Be Mind” sounds like air-raid siren engineered by Butch Vig.
What’s Yr Damage isn’t looking to help you feel more comfortable in whatever hole you may find yourself in—rather, it’s Lovelorn’s way of extending you a hand to pull you out of the wreckage of your life and onto the dance floor.
Buy and stream What’s Yr Damage below via Bandcamp:
You can get a copy of What’s Yr Damage on vinyl via 6131 Records here.
