San Francisco’s LoveLikeFire have set their dial to ‘epic’ – skyscraping guitars, booming keyboards and bedevilled lyrics drenched in rejection and alienation: Little Boots they are not.
Their compelling debut album ‘Tear Ourselves Away’ sounds like a moodier version of ‘Hot Fuss’ by The Killers, with frontwoman Ann Yu’s vivid voice soaring above the bombastic gloom. “If someone were to go through the repertoire of songs that made the album versus songs that were canned, you could see that we gravitate toward melody, darkness, and more vulnerable sounding songs – I think that is a big part of our sound,” Ann explains. “It’s too bad you won’t get to hear the bubblegum goth tunes we’ve written, they never made the cut!”
A classically trained violinist, Yu grew up in Las Vegas and suffered an oppressively restrictive childhood (listening to rock music was off limits); on leaving home she shared both an apartment and rehearsal space with The Killers. However, a move to Frisco further fuelled her long-standing creative vision that would become LoveLikeFire. “Vegas felt very much like country life compared to the city life that seemed to be San Francisco,” Ann reveals. “I felt like I would be exposed to so much more music living in San Francisco – [on arriving] I found an advert of a musician whose influences included Field Mice and The Cardigans, which I would never have found in Vegas.”
‘Tear Ourselves Away’ is a dark, foreboding beast; songs carved from the frustration of Yu’s childhood are the order of the day. Surely she must feel a whole lot better getting all that angst out of her system? “I think being a musician and songwriter, you are always purging, you are always giving a part of you to share with others and that is pretty powerful. I am always honest with myself and whenever I get writer’s block it’s because I have nothing to say. So yes, writing the album was therapeutic because it forces you to tap into feelings past and present.” Yu is savvy enough to have already mapped out LoveLikeFire’s next steps. Although their debut is only just with us, the follow-up is well under way; Ann is keen to change the band’ s sonic direction. “We have written about ten new complete songs as of today. Album [number] two will have a different charm to it, it will be stylistically more unique, we’re throwing some curve balls in there in a good way, the kind of way that makes you unable to understand why you like it but you do.”
Words by John Freeman
Read ClashMusic’s review of LoveLikeFire’s debut album, ‘Tear Ourselves Away’ HERE
