Closer To Grey
You don’t come to Chromatics for the songs so much as the opportunity to linger in the world in which the songs transpire: Eerie, stylish, unsettled but seductive—a horror movie so pretty you don’t see the silver for blade or the red for blood until it’s too late. Surprise-released in late 2019 after a years-long period during which they teased an entirely different album (the hypothetical *Dear Tommy*, whose 25,000 physical copies producer/songwriter Johnny Jewel supposedly destroyed), *Closer to Grey* leans on the lighter side of the band’s sound, shifting between beatless meditations (“Wishing Well,” an unnerving take on “The Sound of Silence”) and brittle, ethereal synth-pop (“You’re No Good,” the downtempo “Light as a Feather”). As with 2012’s *Kill for Love* (and even more so 2007’s classic *Night Drive*), the tension is between the anchor of the beat and the light-headedness of Ruth Radelet’s vocals, the sense that everything is beautiful and shimmering but that the beauty and shimmer only serve to conceal a lurking threat. “Don’t you know that fear is what they offer/Love is there to catch you if you fall,” Radelet sings on the harrowing “Whispers in the Hall” just as the band splinters into noise—a reassurance framed as an inescapable curse.
Chromatics set their surprise “seventh” album at the witching hour, telling a sometimes-muddled tale of heartbroken lovers reaching out to the spirit realm.
There's nothing new here, but Chromatics do their thing better than just about anyone else
Not long after delivering their 2012 magnum opus Kill for Love, the eternally enigmatic Chromatics announced its follow up, a monolithic and shadowy collection called Dear Tommy.
When Chromatics showed up as live performers in a roadhouse scene of 2017's Twin Peaks: The Return, it felt like they had stepped into a spo...
One problem with Chromatics’ latest “surprise” album "Closer to Grey," which dropped without much fanfare last month, is the fact that it wasn’t quite the album many fans were expecting.
Modern life is frantic, moving at a sickening pace. At times it can all feel a bit too much. Perhaps more than ever, people are in need of an escape, just
Smart production, corrupted sounds and existential dread set Kill for Love’s successor apart from schlockier 80s pop reincarnations