The album gets off to a stuttering start, but when the first abortive bars of Blood kick in around track five, it begins to blossom into a beautifully wistful, brooding and slightly twisted work of art. As Staples croons "There's an ugly crowd inside me that specialise in violation", you begin to wonder just what it is he is singing about. City Sickness is one of the stand out tracks on an outstanding album, another slightly disturbing, but infectiously brilliant window into Stuart Staples' world. Patchwork is another gorgeous song, the heart of its melancholy beating in the line "I tried love, it never looked that hard", while Marbles is sheer brilliance, the band weaving a marvellously weird tapestry of sound, while Staples mutters about love being "a series of complicated dance steps, once learned, never forgotten". Later on, Jism sounds like The Gypsy Kings on acid, a dark, twisted tale of jealousy and revenge, the denouement coming when Staples asks "Is there anyone else? I'll understand - and kill them". The album's high point, however, comes with Raindrops, an unutterably bleak, hauntingly beautiful ode to dying love. As the violins swoon and the piano murmurs, and Staples whispers "We sit and watch the divide widen, we sit and listen to our hearts crumble" if you don't feel a lump in your throat, you are not human.
As the final bars of The Not Knowing fade into the ether, you seem to awaken from a sad, beautiful dream, with the feeling that you've lost a part of yourself, and will never be able to find it again. Embrace it.
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