White Lies

Since we’ve been skirting around indie as a genre with bands that actual hipsters would never publicly admit to liking, the closet pretentious elitist in me couldn’t not include a White Lies show. To be fair, the band members themselves are not pretentious elitists, at least as far as I know, but when your band is drawing comparisons to the likes of Joy Division, Interpol and the Killers, you know you’ve made a name for yourself as a cred-worthy band. Although, to again be fair, if you’re an English band and you don’t get that, you might as well quit the music industry and work a desk job doing data entry. I mean, that’s like, the big, all-or-nothing measure of worthiness for bands over there, right? To be fair for the last time, attempting to pin the band down with comparisons of who they sound like really sells them short, because really, Brandon Flowers wishes he could write a synth-pop album of this epic a scope. Seriously, the band’s new album and their previous one are both masterpieces of dynamic, cinematic storytelling, with frontman Harry McVeigh’s dark and haunting vocals emoting immeasurably despite his signature monotonic, melancholic style. So if you’re going to indulge in some elitism this week, at least you can do it with a quality band this time that’s actually worth their hype. - Brien Overly