This is a cross-post from my Sound Club music club, where I regularly share an album for listening and discussion. Check out the club here.
Amidst all the bigger shifts in 00s alternative and electronic music — nu rave, the resurgence of post punk, electroclash, Ed Banger and the impact of French touch — there was something much subtler happening a little further behind the scenes.
Based out of Portland and West Hollywood, a record label called Italians Do It Better was quietly cultivating a kind of cinematic deadpan electro. With a style that referenced Italo Disco, listening to the early releases from the label gives a little glimpse into what became the future. The sound has a dose of Electroclash (more on that another time), but with the edges sanded off. In their place are glossy surfaces, albeit with nothing to reflect but black and chrome.
The resulting sounds ended up manifesting in many movies, Drive, for one, but the label also both channeled, and influenced, David Lynch. Indeed, Italians Do It Better co-founder Johnny Jewel ended up contributing fairly heavily to the soundtrack to Twin Peaks: The Return.
One of the artists in this set who most stood out to me were Desire. Formed by Jewel himself, together with vocalist Megan Louise and, at one stage, Nat Walker (also a band member with Jewel is Chromatics — again, more another time). To this day, they have only released three albums, with an extended 13-year gap between their debut (confusingly sometimes called II, sometimes simply Desire), in 2009, and 2022’s Escape. Nonetheless, they are an act whose influence is quiet but enduring.
II is arguably anchored around two pretty staggering stand-out moments. The first is the fractured break-up song, Don’t Call, which sees Megan Louise instruct a former lover to “Don’t call, to talk about nothing”. Overdubbed vocals, washed in reverb, shimmer and fracture atop a slow synth string backing and a simple drum pattern. The result is a lesson in economy — haunting, beautiful, heartbreaking and catchy as hell.
The album’s other peak moment is the obsessive Under Your Spell, which sees Louise opine about a person whom she can’t escape the thought of. This is Desire at their absolute best — she calls into the darkness that “I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I do nothing but think of you…” It reflects those moments where feelings for another person can become so all consuming that it is all you experience. In the bridge on the full-length version (throw out anything below 4:30 long, seriously), Megan Louise drops into a spoken word delivery, asking us the difference between love and obsession, before seemingly referencing André 3000 in a chant of “forever ever?”. It’s a playful yet ultimately devastating moment. We’ve probably all been there.
The beauty here is how perfectly Desire capture the feeling of floating adrift in our emotions — it is uncomfortable and all consuming, and tempting to want it to go on forever … And yet, at the same time, we know that is impossible. Dreams will end, and it will be time to wake up. Again, it all feels very Lynchian — otherworldly and heavenly, yet sinister.
Elsewhere, the album has plenty more beautiful moments of similar restraint. Colorless Sky sees a series of simple chimes playfully float among a stark synthesiser melody, almost child-like in its simplicity, even as the result is a chronically adult feeling on monochromatic depression. In all honesty, the one criticism I would have of II is that moments like this are almost too much — okay to dip your toe into, but too sad to live within.