Basciville – Love In the Time of the State

‘Gather up yourself again/Work for nothing/Do it well’ – ‘Nothing Surprises Me Anymore’ How do you sing a love song when the world is disgusted with you, or you’re disgusted with the world? How do you not sing a love song in that condition? With Basciville’s Love in the Time of the State, Cillian and Lorcan Byrne have made an album about feeling sick in the heart and shocked by the times, but the weird thing is it sounds paradoxically uplifting. Nobody’s trying to sell you a lie, at least. Nobody’s trying to sell you anything. Call it disillusioned, but only in the sense of being disabused of an illusion. Better to bite on reality, no matter how bittersweet. In musical terms, Love in the Time of the State is haunted by the ghosts of an age when the most uncompromising artists dominated media and market, when the culture was fertile and thriving, and the delivery ecosystem was, if not fair, then at least functional. The performances are intimate and epic, all chiming guitars, soaring vocals and supple rhythms. You can hear the integrated strains of Nirvana Unplugged (‘Help Myself’), late 90s Radiohead (‘Nothing Surprises Me Any More’, ‘Meteors and Let Downs’), Jeff Buckley and Gustavo Santaeolalla and even Peter Gabriel in ‘Higher Plans’. And older spirits too, the ghosts of traditional songs and narrative ballads, The album’s money shot? ‘Your Own Head’, a careworn duet with Ailbhe Reddy. Maybe it’s a process of time plus pressure, or the experience of recording, performing and writing with everyone from Susan O’Neill to Colm Mac Con Iomaire to Lemoncello, but this second Basciville album is its own curated space. People who make art, music, whatever, spend years striving for that click where they metabolise their influences and synthesise everything they love, harness it to their own experience and forge an original voice. This is where Basciville are now. Love in the Time of the State is an album locked in a struggle with its own loss of heart. It’s hard to swallow and impossible to ignore, it’s pure honey and cod liver oil, it’s opium and self-meds, and it’s in total resonance with the times.