It's kind of funny that this London band used to be called Fear of Flying, inasmuch as it's possible to find anything funny about White Lies. Fuck merely flying-- these guys want to soar, to be godlike observers proudly watching their music soundtrack the biggest moments of your life. One of the tracks here is called "The Power and the Glory", and it sounds exactly like you think it does, i.e., more needlessly grandiose than both Kanye songs combined. Problem is, for the second straight album, they do so with the same exact set of tools as every other band in this sphere. So critiquing Ritual threatens to be a process of listing obvious influences that's just as dull as actually listening to the thing.
I will say that lead singer Harry McVeigh might be just someone incapable of feeling shame rather than someone who has no idea what his own lyrics even mean. Cringe-inducing lines like, "You were crying on the shoulders of the men in the shadows/ Whoever taught you to sell your sex like that?" pop up with alarming regularity, but what makes this most confusing of all is its context in the sort of empathy-rock that's supposed to cue Pavlovian handholding and liplocking amongst concertgoers. Which is why I should tip my cap to Ritual highlight "Streetlights" which at least is such an obvious rip of "Cars" that you feel thankful they sound like someone other than White Lies for a few minutes.
Otherwise, you've lived through Glasvegas and such, so you should know the drill by now: guitars whoosh and whir to sound exactly like synthesizers while the actual synthesizer goo provides the empty calories required for nearly every track on Ritual to reach its completely arbitrary five-minute length. The constant hi-hats and thrumming bass are meant to imply some sense of urgent momentum, and the inevitable half-time chorus lets McVeigh over-sing even more. Take all these ingredients, mix them together, and voila-- instant UK buzzband. Hey, I don't make the rules.
I mean really, why White Lies? What vacuum did nature abhor that much? Maybe it's the one where the relatively smaller dimensions of the UK make it possible to believe that typical rock bands can become arena-filling gods from their first single. But in the past two decades, the search for the new Radiohead begat the search for the new Coldplay begat the search for the new Libertines begat the search for the new Franz Ferdinand, and now here we are hoping that someone can perhaps fill the gaping void that would occur if Editors decide to pack it up tomorrow.
