Lebanon Hanover
Asylum Lullabies
Fabrika Records
In the roughly dozen years since Lebanon Hanover’s breakout hit “Gallowsdance” became a goth club and streaming playlist staple, the duo of Larissa Iceglass and William Maybelline have indulged in both the depressive but still danceable version of modern darkwave, and full-on dirges suitable for staring into the middle distance, unblinking. While their last LP Sci-Fi Skies saw them skewing towards the former sound, new album Asylum Lullabies heavily favours the latter; even in its most upbeat moments it’s unnervingly dark and discordant, and to be frank, kind of a downer.
Music to mope to is of course an area in which Iceglass and Maybelline excel, and as always they walk the line between opaque and emotionless and howling despair ably. Where a track like “Sleep”, with its breathy pads and minimally spaced percussion is certainly spiked with the group’s signature graven-voiced affect and wry lyrical outlook (how many acts can get away with a couplet like “No more shame and no more pain / Being up to me just feels so very lame”?), it’s positively jubilant sitting next to “Torture Rack”, a shambling assembly of phased guitar, muted strumming and stop-start bass, never more than an inch from falling apart entirely from the sheer exhaustion of ennui.
Which is not to say that the album is without energy or movement. “Waiting List” hums with tension, its orch hits, synth bass and snappy electronic drums providing some forward momentum, even as a particularly croaky Iceglass wanders through a lyrical wilderness, incapable of resting even in the face of emotional exhaustion. “My Love” finds Maybelline taking the opposite tack, delivering a lighter vocal performance that more suits the bounce of the synth instrumental, although that respite is completely annihilated by companion follow-up “I’m Doing This For You”, where he howls and moans with such conviction that the song’s “Love can build a better path” refrain becomes a desperate plea.
Make no mistake, Asylum Lullabies is Lebanon Hanover at their most convincingly dismal, and it’s by design. If you have any doubt of that, just listen to the album’s concluding track “Parrots”, an atonal screed that ends with an abrupt screech, as ugly and confrontational as they’ve ever sounded. The twist is that it’s also the band at their most vital and genuine, tunneling through surface layers of melancholy into a rich substrata of misery, with just enough pockets of respite to keep it from collapsing from the hopelessness of it all. In short, if you’re up (or down) for some of the most potent gloom going, Lebanon Hanover have you covered.
