Faultline - 'Your Love Means Everything' (Blanco Y Negro)
4/5
By: Toby L
David Koston, the main bod behind Faultline, seems to be finding his feet with second LP, 'Your Love Means Everything'. His debut work, the solely instrumental 'Closer, Colder' (a fitting title by all accounts), didn't turn out the way his current effort has, because, in his words, 'I didn't know how to find the people that I wanted to work with, so I ended up with Dennis Hopper samples, porn chatlines and death threats...' You could argue that, after such a prior endeavour, creating a successful follow-up wouldn't be too difficult. And it doesn't seem to have been.
... For 'Your Love...' is a very natural set of recordings, not succumbing to a specific or continual theme, instead allowing itself to veer off down into the different avenues as guided along by its trance-y, DJ Shadow-esque, enchanting electronica, spine-tingling strings, and numerous guest-vocalists, of which featured on here are REM's Michael Stipe and his grainy Athens, USA high-pitched croak, The Flaming Lips' fragile falsetto of Wayne Coyne, Rough Trade's heart-warming Jacob Golden, and Coldplay's Chris Martin. As if that wasn't enough, you even get Nick McCabe, ex of The Verve, popping up for a rare (if difficult to define) guitar-part in the richly dreamy 'Lost Broadcast'.
Due to such varying contributors, mood-swings are the most noticeable attribute of this LP, and when tracks such as the live-drums explosion of 'Missing' soon segue into Coyne's shockingly chirpy (well, sort of), piano-based 'The Colossal Gray Sunshine', and you're treated to a set of lyrics including 'You're turning off the sun by turning off your love,' nothing could be more sumptuous... Unless you happen to hear the tick-tock rhythmic spiralling of 'Clocks', whose languid and fluid synth-FX threaten to turn into an Ibiza club-anthem though never do, soon easing into Stipey's haunting 'Greenfields', a classic cover of a childhood fave-tune of Koston's. Elsewhere, Chris Martin's vocal-donation shows a more contemplative and relaxed tone being explored as opposed to the usual belt-it-out high notes and soaring Buckley-isms, his effort in the closing title-track proving quite poignant, and ending proceedings on a typically affecting key.
At times unquestionably original, Koston's latest collection of mid-pace gems - not to be derogatory by any means whatsoever - is living proof of what could surely constitute a new genre: 'Intelligent Chill-out,' where the listener is not so much drifting through a series of anticipated zones of relaxed fulfilment, but, more likely, aboard the musical-ship of the UK's best-kept solo-secret.
Competent, challenging and consistently surprising, this record's suaveness is only outclassed by the collective display of unique talent on offer. Undoubtedly, one of 2002's outside bets for 'Album of the Year'.
Artists in this article: Faultline
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