Six years after their sophomore record, Chiaroscuro, Swedish duo I Break Horses is back with Warnings. The title feels like too little too late, for how much more can humanity really be warned at this point? And it’s clear the “great” “empire” civilization is doomed, like the Greeks and Romans before them, to ignore their fatal flaws, choosing to carry on like the party will never stop. The air of tragedy about Maria Lindén’s vocals–set against Fredrik Balck’s drums–however, is more comforting than scary. Like another Scandinavian shoegaze duo before them, The Raveonettes, I Break Horses has cultivated an indelible sound punctuated by serene tones and lulling backing tracks, even when the subject matter is painful.
As is the case on the first track of the album, “Turn.” With Lindén forced to acknowledge that she can’t keep pretending the relationship she’s in is ever going to get on the right course, she makes the reconciliation over nine minutes of sweeping musical glory, “Wasting my time and my future.” At times, her revelation veers toward a communal sentiment for all those who have ever been victims of unrequited affection, noting, “We’re fuckin’ with absent hearts/While our heart’s breakin’.” Painfully, she wrestles with her issues about letting go with the simple assessment, “Turn/I can’t turn around.” But turn around she must… before it’s too late.
The more hopeful tinge of “Silence” leads one to believe that perhaps Lindén has made that turn with the lyric, “I put an ocean between you and me.” With production from Chris Coady, the sound of Beach House (and on a separate note, The xx) is all over this particular track. Punctuated with a tone of triumphant defiance, the vibe is momentarily broken by “l a r m,” an interlude, of sorts, that sounds like an ominous communiqué from some alien civilization. Of course, what aliens would want to bother with our kind other than to turn us into slave labor (oh wait, the corporation has already done that anyway)?
The 80s-sounding “I’ll Be the Death Of You” comes across like it might have served as the score for an edgier John Hughes movie (even though Pretty in Pink and Curly Sue did get pretty raw at times), with Lindén insisting, “Don’t care what you find,” as though whatever the explorer in question might unearth couldn’t possibly matter at this point, because whatever happens, it’s already too late–as evidenced by the warning, “I wish you could get out in time.” Alas, whatever overtakes the subject (maybe corona) of the tale seems to goadingly taunt–whether inanimate or not–“I’ll be the death of you.”
This is succeeded by the next interlude-y “d e n l i l l a p a s e a v l y c k a,” filled with the faint murmurings of a language just nebulous enough to interpret as “foreign,” as though I Break Horses wants you to feel like a sympathetic Stasi officer overhearing something you know you shouldn’t (yes, it’s all very The Lives of Others). Fading into a mere violin-inspired “impression” as opposed to full-tilt song, the soothing sounds transition into the upbeat “The Prophet.” As though told from the perspective of a reluctant prophet, almost hesitant to take on the weighty responsibility of foresight (just look how much good it did Cassandra), Lindén croons, “Stuck the fuse in me and my deepest feelings” in between acknowledging, “You’re calling out for something to believe in/Let me be the guiding light/‘Cause we can’t lose this feeling…/You’re waiting for my holy words and my healing music.” That we were. Echoing one of the sentiments of the first track on Warnings, however, is the feeling that the prophet is wasting it all on the ones around her, as elucidated by the sentiment, “I just can’t waste my story.” Alas, that’s what writers must do all the time, surrendering theirs to pages that will go unread in favor of some Jonathan Franzen bullshit.
Drenched in synths that make it rife for being a single from the Italians Do It Better catalogue, “Neon Lights” creates another dreamy, languorous alternate reality to escape into. Thus, Lindén invites, “Because I had a lonely heart/I brought you here to be a part of…” Trailing off, she perhaps feels no need to finish her sentence because the point isn’t what you’re a part of–only that you’re a part of something (so long as it’s not a white supremacist organization). After all, as she puts it, “My dreams are real/Your truth so bleak.” Wanting to remain in the cocoon of “non-truth” a.k.a. non-reality, it is for this reason that she must admit, “I’m a demon in your righteous hand.” For those who acknowledge the truth tend to be among the only righteous ones left among us ostrich-demons choosing to bury our heads in the sand the worse things overtly get.
The lugubrious drum machine of “I Live At Night” iterates the disposition of a generation, further cemented by Lindén remarking, “I often tremble with the truth.” Clearly a running theme on the record, truth and its elasticity when one is afraid to address it head-on underscores much of the reason for our collective depression, further compounded when the consequences of ignoring the truth come to roost in the form of say, global pandemics and monumental economic recessions. Fittingly, the picked up rhythm of “Baby You Have Travelled For Miles Without Love in Your Eyes” seeks to emphasize that there can only be a modicum of love–happiness–in one’s life by addressing the truth full-on. So it is that Lindén commences the track with the lyric, “Shot the beauty right in its broken eye.” That is to say, there’s a reason it’s called the “ugly” truth. Then again, as beauty is so often subjective, who’s to say that there isn’t a bit of sparkle and shimmer in verity? It all depends how you look at it, or whether you’re willing to invite Jesus in the room while dancing with the devil that is “ignoring the facts” (at one point, Lindén paints the portrait, “You invited the devil and Jesus Christ,” as though to suggest that everyone needs to wrestle with both their “good” and “bad” conscience to sustain a level-headed approach). Yet instead of facing your fears–the truth–and adhering to the warnings, you find better, more powerful ways to numb yourself, hence one of the most beautifully poetic lines of the record, “With the perfect needle you’ve got someone to crucify/As you poison your veins, nobody’s gonna hear you cry.”
Such lyrics are rife for transitioning to a song about suicide. Ergo, veering back to the serene and trippy is “Death Engine,” a sorrowful number befitting its macabre subject matter. The one that Lindén described in an interview as follows: “The song, which was written in connection to a close friend’s suicide attempt, also reflects upon the increasing reports that suicide is the second leading cause of death among Generation Z, with this age group having more mental health issues than any other generation.” With an intro reminiscent of Thompson Twins, the 80s feel lends a sense of drama that only heightens the sense of irony, to boot. For the 80s was a decade filled with the simultaneous phenomena of “over feeling” (see: any number of the cheesy films that were released within the time frame) and “over numbing” (see: cocaine), to the point where the spectrum collided in on itself to bring about the blasé attitude of the 90s that was presented, ultimately, cheesily. It wasn’t until Gen Z came of age that the same war of over feeling and over numbing would reach another crescendo (though millennials undoubtedly had a hand in that mounting crest). Except, instead of the disease of AIDS causing everyone to drop like flies around them, it’s coronavirus.
After such a heavy topic, it’s only right that I Break Horses should temper “Death Engine” with an instrumental break. Presented in the fashion of some sort of call to arms–or something you might hear upon entering heaven or happening upon an idyllic, unpopulated nature area with a sun-dappled waterfall as its centerpiece–“a b s o l u t a m o l l p u n k t e n” serves as yet another unspoken interlude before we make our way to the coda of Warnings.
The vocoder-laden “Depression Tourist” (think: Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek”) is given life in the video of the live session, in which Lindén appears in black and white amid a deserted field with nothing more than her instrument to serve as a beacon to stand against the desolation. As she described capturing the overall leaning of the motif, “I wanted this song to sound as if it was broadcasted from space, the loneliest place I could imagine. As I obviously couldn’t perform it up there I filmed this version in the loneliest field I could find in Malta.” Because yes, even Malta still sounds more appealing than space so long as Elon Musk has a monopoly on the latter.
As one of the shortest songs on the album, Lindén wields its brevity–and a capella stylings–to give us one final emotional wallop before leaving us to contemplate all the “warnings” we just received. Many of them so arcane, we’ll never understand. But would we heed them even if we did?
